
ciass_:Ea_LMA 

Book A.(o 

COFVRIGHT DEPOSnV 



LOVE AND LETTERS 



BY 
FREDERIC ROWLAND MARVIN 



"Give all to love; 
Obey thy heart; 
Friends, kindred, days. 
Estate, good-fame. 
Plans, credit, and the Muse, — 
Nothing refuse." 

— Emerson. 




BOSTON 

SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY 

1911 









Copyright, 1911 
Sherman, French &• Company 



ICI.A300012 



TO 

MY BEI.OVKO WIFB 

PERSIS 



"O happy they! the happiest of their kind! 
Whom gentler stars unite, and in one fate 
Their hearts, their fortune, and their beings blend." 

Thompson. 



PREFACE 

The farmer who requested to be buried in 
Petrarch's grave that his dust might mingle with 
that of the poet, could not secure to himself so 
great an honor even though he offered one hun- 
dred crowns of gold for the privilege. He 
sought for himself a distinction that in no way 
belonged to him, and that could not under any 
possible circumstances be other than offensive to 
all lovers of art and letters. But when Lafayette 
sent for earth from Bunker Hill that it might be 
placed over his body after its interment, the se- 
lectmen of Boston saw at once the beauty and 
propriety of his request. They took earth from 
the spot where General Warren fell, and with it 
forwarded to Lafayette's agent a certificate stat- 
ing that it was earth from one of the most sacred 
of places. The certificate was signed by three 
of the oldest men in Boston, all of whom felt that 
their names were honored by being thus associ- 
ated with the glory of the new republic. 

In these pages I seek for myself no foreign 
distinction to which I may lay no rightful claim. 
I endeavor only to associate my name with those 
friendly studies which are natural to all lovers of 
good books who delight in quiet evenings spent in 
the library with such volumes as dear old Charles 
Lamb used to touch with reverence and kiss with 
tenderness. Fletcher said this for me and for all 
who love good books long ago when he wrote: 



PREFACE 

"That place that does 
Contain my books, the best companions, is 
To me a glorious court, where hourly I 
Converse with the old sages and philosophers." 

With some consciousness of my many limita- 
tions and of the imperfections in my work, I yet 
offer to my readers a literary fare that has filled 
for me many a long winter evening with delight, 
and that I truly hope may bring pleasure to 
others. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I. LOVE AND LETTERS ..... 1 

II. THE GOOD NEIGHBOR ... 93 

III. SILENCE 109 

IV. NOBLE DEEDS OF HUMBLE MEN 151 

V. THE COLLEGE AND BUSINESS 

LIFE .........:. 161 

VI. OLD AGE ........... 187 

VII. CULTURE 223 

VIII. VICISTI GALILEE . , .. . • 235 



LOVE AND LETTERS 

*0 yepov, owTts fceivov avrjp aXaXi] fi€VO<i i\6o)V 
ayyeAAwv Tretaeie yvvalKoi re (cat <f>LXov viov, 
aXX' dAAto5 KO/xcS^s K€Xpr]fi€voL av8pe<i aXrjrai 
xf/evhovr'y ov8' iOeXovcrw aXrjOea fivOrjaaaOai. 
'^Os 8e k' dA7/T€iJwv 'l6dKr]<; cs Srjfxov iKrjTai, 
iXOwv es SeffTTOtvav e/x^v aTrar^Aia ^d^ei. 
Tj 8' €11 SeiafievT] c}>lX€€l kol eKacrra /xeraAAa, 
Kat ot oSvpofievrj pXecf)dp(jiv oltto SaKpva mirTei, 
T] ^e/xi5 ecTTt ywatKOs, ctt^v Trocrts dXXoO' oXrjTai. 

Homer. 
Ah, wasteful woman ! she who may 
On her sweet self set her own price, 
Knowing he cannot choose but pay — 
How has she cheapened Paradise! 
How given for naught her priceless gift; 
How spoiled the bread and spilled the wine. 
Which, spent with due, respective thrift 
Had made brutes men and men divine! 



LOVE AND LETTERS 

WHEN Mrs. Lewes, the legal wife of G. H. 
Lewes, died in England some time ago, 
an old story, false and even absurd in every 
detail, was revived. It was asserted that Mr. 
Lewes had deliberately deserted his wife, moved 
thereto by the powerful intellect and personal 
qualities of the gifted author of "Adam Bede." 
Mrs. Lewes was rehabilitated and readomed, 
and the only logical inference that could be 
drawn from the tender and pathetic words 
spoken over her grave and published from one 
end of England to the other was that she was 
a much abused woman. The real facts in the 
case were set forth in a statement which appeared 
in The London Times. It was made by an 
Edinburgh lady who was well acquainted with 
both Mr. Lewes and George Eliot. A due re- 
gard for truth as well as a sense of justice re- 
quires that the statement which was signed by 
E. Katharine Bates, and which is not so widely 
known as could be wished, should be published 
whenever the opportunity presents itself. The 
statement runs thus: 

"Some years ago I was taking tea with Mr. and 
Mrs. Charles Lewes, (he being the son of George 
Henry Lewes, to whom George Eliot left her MSS. 
and most of her possessions,) and the conversation 
turned upon the subject to which your remarks re- 
fer. I had often heard some such suggestions 



2 LOVE AND LETTERS 

made, and had greatly desired to know the truth 
of the matter. That afternoon Mr. Charles Lewes 
accompanied me downstairs to the hall door, and 
by a sudden and overpowering impulse I was led 
to ask him whether it were true that his father 
had left his mother owing to the influence of 
George Eliot. *It is a wicked falsehood,' was his 
answer. 'My mother had left my father before he 
and George Eliot had ever met each other. George 
Eliot found a ruined life, and she made it into a 
beautiful life. She found us poor little motherless 
boys, and what she did for us no one on earth 
will ever know ' ; and his whole face lighted up with 
emotion, and the tears came to his eyes as he said 
this to me. He then continued in these words: 'I 
am the son of the woman who people say was 
wronged by George Eliot and by my father. I have 
told you the real truth of the matter, and you have 
my authority to repeat it wherever and whenever 
such a statement is made again in your presence.' " 

It will be generally admitted that the question 
asked was anything but delicate. Only the 
closest friendship saved it from being a piece 
of unqualified impertinence. Yet it is well for 
us and for the memory of the dead that the 
question was asked. It was asked none too 
soon. Not long after the interview the useful 
and gentle life of Mr. Charles Lewes came to an 
end in far-away Egypt. 

Lewes, according to those who knew him best, 
was not what is commonly called "a magnetic 
man"; strangers found Kim cold and unrespon- 
sive. The Rev, O. B. Frothingham, who for 



LOVE AND LETTERS 3 

many years represented more than any one else 
in all the English-speaking world what is known 
as "The Free Religious Movement," had some- 
thing of the same temperament. He was con- 
scious of the barrier that nature, reenforced by 
a studious disposition and fine culture, had 
erected between himself and ordinary men and 
women. To his friend, Mr. Chadwick, he la- 
mented the "thin sheet of ice" that deterred many 
worthy and earnest souls from reaching him with 
their sympathy and moral support. Mr. Lewes 
does not seem to have been either aware of his 
aloofness or generous enough to regret the dif- 
ficulty experienced by the uninitiated in ap- 
proaching him. Moncure D. Conway, who knew 
him well, did not discover in his face anything 
hke "sweetness and light"; and he tells us in 
his "Autobiography" that Lewes "did not have 
a pleasing voice nor any look of sensibility; 
but," he adds, "there was always a quick atten- 
tion on his part and deference whenever George 
Eliot said anything," 

There must have been something personally 
attractive in the character and companionship 
of the man who could win the heart of such a 
woman as George Eliot. The portrait which is 
commonly reproduced does not represent him as 
in any wise physically attractive — some pictures 
make him even repulsive. But by common agree- 
ment he was a man of rare conversational powers 
and of pleasing address. Perhaps it was 
Mr. Lewes' literary work and standing that 



4) LOVE AND LETTERS 

first interested George Eliot. Certainly it 
was his offer of literary assistance, based upon 
an early discovery of her unusual ability, that 
led to her recognition by the public as a woman 
of genius and a writer of great promise. Had 
she never known Mr. Lewes the recognition 
might have been delayed, but it could hardly 
have lingered a very long time. Her first in- 
clination was in the direction of philosophy. 
She was a student of Comte, translated "Lehen 
Jesu," and assisted Dr. Chapman in the con- 
duct of the Westminster Review. It was Lewes 
who first discovered her genius in the realm of 
fiction, and it was through his advice and en- 
couragement that her serious attention was given 
to the construction of the novel. His offer of 
assistance was not hastily accepted, nor was his 
efi^ort to make her acquaintance immediately suc- 
cessful. She shrank from publicity of every 
kind, and a wall of natural reserve had to be 
in some measure demolished before the two 
gifted writers could meet in friendly conversa- 
tion. No doubt the peculiar social position of 
Mr. L'gwes had much to do with her early re- 
luctance to make his acquaintance, and to profit 
by his offer of literary assistance. But the 
offer was based upon a real admiration for her 
genius, and a sincere and honorable desire to be 
of , service to one peculiarly gifted, and whose 
views and tastes were in many respects strik- 
ingly in accord with his own. She was inter- 
ested in many different departments of thought 



LOVE AND LETTERS 6 

and learning. She was a good linguist. Her 
translation of Feuerbach's "Essence of Chris- 
tianity" had won for her the admiration of 
scholarly men and women. And, added to all 
this, her religious opinions and attitude must 
have helped to recommend her to the unbeliev- 
ing mind of Mr. Lewes. She had departed 
from the faith of her childhood, and had em- 
braced, if not in its entirety, at least in its es- 
sential features, the doctrines of Auguste Comte. 
The Edinburgh Review described her, in review- 
ing her work after her death, as "the first great 
godless writer of fiction that has appeared in 
England, and perhaps in Europe." The Re- 
view did not intend to use the term "godless" in 
any oifensive sense; it employed the word as the 
one best fitted to describe the real attitude of the 
woman toward what is commonly called religion. 
It was not contended that she was opposed to 
God, but only that she did not believe that He 
had any real existence. The Review continued: 

"In the world of earnest art, George Eliot is the 
first legitimate fruit of our modern atheistic pietism; 
and as such she is an object of extreme interest, 
if not to artistic epicures, at any rate to all anxious 
inquirers into human destiny. For in her writings 
we have some sort of presentation of a world of 
high endeavor, pure morality, and strong enthusi- 
asm, existing in full force, without any reference 
to, or help from, the thought of God." 

It seems to us that George Eliot's attitude 
toward religion, giving that word its usual mean- 



6 LOVE AND LETTERS 

ing, accounts in some measure for the fascina- 
tion which Mr. Lewes felt in the society and 
conversation of the gifted writer who was for 
so many years his true though not his legal 
wife. They were of one heart and of one soul. 
Their union, notwithstanding its status in 
English law, the many unfortunate embarrass- 
ments to which it gave rise, and the unfavora- 
ble comments which it evoked, was ethically a 
true marriage, noble and in every way honorable. 
When Mr. Lewes met Marian Evans he was 
in a peculiar position. He was legally the hus- 
band of a woman with whom he did not live, and 
whose conduct had absolved him from all respon- 
sibility for her support and happiness. His 
wife, who was a woman of great personal beauty, 
but as well most wayward and reckless, had some 
years before eloped with a lover. Upon her 
protestations of repentance, he had forgiven her, 
and received her back into his home as his wife. 
This was, of course, a condonation of her crime 
which prevented him, when she again eloped, 
from obtaining a divorce. He could not marry 
so long as his wife in name, though no longer 
such in reality, lived. For some time Mr. Lewes 
and Marian Evans hesitated, not certain what 
course it was best to pursue, but at last, after 
consultation with friends, they determined to join 
their fortunes without the sanction of the church, 
and to face for the great love they bore each 
other the social disfavor that they knew must 
be encountered. From that time on in the 



LOVE AND LETTERS 7 

friendly circle in which they moved, George Eliot 
was known and honored as Mrs. Lewes. 

The life of George Eliot in the home of Mr. 
Lewes must have been in no small measure a 
happy one ; and yet, no doubt, there was mingled 
with its gladness some degree of mental distress 
and loneliness growing out of its firm and de- 
termined protest against social injustice and a 
narrow and conventional ethical system. In 
this belief I am encouraged by the opinion of 
Mr. Frederick Locker-Lampson freely expressed 
in his book, "My Confidences": 

"I am sure that she (George Eliot) was very 
sensitive, and must have had many a painful half 
hour as the helpmate of Mr. Lewes, by accepting 
the position in which she had placed herself in op- 
position to the moral instincts of most of those whom 
she held most dear. Though intellectually self- 
contained, I believe she was singularly dependent on 
the emotional side of her nature. With her, as 
with nearly all women, she needed a something to 
lean upon. ... I have an impression that she 
felt her position acutely, and was unhappy." 

When the legal Mrs. Lewes died it was thought 
that a marriage according to law would be 
eff'ected at once, and it was rumored that such 
a union had taken place. But the two, already 
accustomed to regard themselves as husband and 
wife, and unwilling to discredit the existing rela- 
tionship by any formalities that might cast dis- 
credit upon sincere affection and a pure life, 



8 LOVE AND LETTERS 

continued to live together "after the Lord's holy 
ordinance," though not after the less important 
ordinance of man. There was also a natural 
shrinking from further publicity. Both Mr. 
Lewes and George Eliot were constantly before 
the world, and their social relations had been the 
subject of much gossip. It is not surprising 
that they shrank from figuring in another sen- 
sational affair for the entertainment of idle and 
foolish people and an army of brazen-faced 
newspaper reporters. They seem to have cared 
little for the praise and even less for the cen- 
sure of the world. They did not wish to be lions, 
and in each other's society they found ample 
companionship and happiness. 

Another story of George Eliot and George 
Henry Lewes is the uncommon one which Mr. 
Richard C. Jackson told Walter Pater, and 
which Mr. Wright has preserved in his "Life 
of Pater." The story runs thus: 

"One day (in 1854) at a dinner party, George 
Eliot being among the guests, somebody happened 
to observe that George Henry Lewes was seriously 
ill, and without a soul in the house to wait upon him. 
George Eliot pricked up her ears, and then saying, 
hurriedly, 'Please excuse me, I must go,' she left 
the table. She made her way straight to Lewes' 
house and knocked at the door. After she had 
waited a considerable time the sick man put his 
head out of the bedroom window and enquired who 
was there. 



LOVE AND LETTERS 9 

" 'It is I, Miss Evans/ cried George Eliot. 'I 
have come to nurse you. Let me in, and I ■vron't 
leave the house till you are better.* " 

Mr. Jackson went on to say that that was the 
true story of the origin of the intimacy between 
George Eliot and George Henry Lewes ; that 
the love between them was purely platonic; and 
that they never occupied together the same bed- 
room. Those who wish to do so can believe 
Mr. Jackson's story, but the world will never 
accept it, for the very good reason that it be- 
littles both George Eliot and Mr. Lewes, and also 
for the further reason that it lacks the stamp of 
truth. 

It was a shock to the entire English-speaking 
world when, after Lewes' death, George Eliot 
married Mr. John Walter Cross, a merchant in 
London, who was twenty years her junior. 
She married him in a Christian church, and, 
worst of all, signed her name "Marian Evans, 
spinster," thus ignoring Lewes and confessing 
that her relations with him had not been "after 
the Lord's holy ordinance." It was, no doubt, 
a sad climax to a life of great achievement. The 
dream and the romance, so idealistic and beauti- 
ful, faded away in the dull drab of a rainy day 
in some desolate moorland. The woman who 
had not for twenty years believed that there was 
a God took His name upon her lips in the most 
fashionable church in London, bowed her head 
when the priest recited the prayer, and so far 



10 LOVE AND LETTERS 

as we can discern subscribed to what she did not 
believe, and left the temple of religion "a shat- 
tered idol." 

George Eliot rested so firmly upon Mr. Lewes 
for her ethical courage that when he was with 
her no more she was unable to maintain an inde- 
pendence which she never possessed apart from 
him. She rested so entirely upon his compan- 
ionship that when she was deprived of it the 
necessity for other support was absolute. This, 
I think, explains in some measure her marriage 
with a man twenty years her junior, her implied 
confession that her relations with Mr. Lewes 
were not what they should have been, and her 
practical recantation which we have no reason 
to believe was sincere. She had acquired wealth 
and fame, and she had conquered prejudice and 
public disapproval. That conquest, however, 
had been won with Mr. Lewes by her side, and 
without his companionship it could not have been, 
maintained. His death meant for her complete 
personal collapse in everything resembling social 
and ethical independence. 

Many foolish and self-righteous attacks have 
been made upon the character of George Eliot. 
Among these may be mentioned a book by the 
Rev. W. L. Watkinson, called "The Influence of 
Scepticism on Character," from which I excerpt 
these unworthy lines: 

"It was with this all-important institution (mar- 
riage) that George Eliot trifled, and by consenting 
to live with a man whose wife was still alive she 



LOVE AND LETTERS 11 

lent her vast influence to the lowering in the na- 
tional mind of the sense of marital obligation which 
involves the happiness and dignity of millions." 

" The two chosen representatives of the superior 
morality set aside truth for a lie, preferred their 
own will and pleasure to purity and justice, and 
exalted their lawless fancy above a palpable public 
duty, and lived together in adultery." 

"The wronged wife in the background always 
makes herself felt; the torn veil is on the floor no 
matter what gaieties may be going on, and one is 
conscious of a sickening sensation all through the 
history." 

"The wronged wife," indeed ! Few men would 
instance the life of the first Mrs. Lewes as one 
of unmerited suffering because of an unkind hus- 
band's cruelty. The sanctimonious Mr. Watkin- 
son must certainly have known that his words 
were false. If there ever was a woman who did 
not place her own will and pleasure above the 
happiness of others, and who refused to place 
these above purity and justice, that woman was 
George Eliot. 

The editor of the Christian World, a paper 
published in London, is of the same opinion with 
the Rev. Mr. Watkinson. These are the words 
of an anonymous contributor which he approves 
and prints : 

"George Eliot preached the doctrine of renun- 
ciation — ^the doctrine of self-sacrifice — ^the doctrine 



12 LOVE AND LETTERS 

of breaking the neck of inclination, though stiff as 
steel, under the foot of duty: but it was not given 
to her to give a transcendent example of this Chris- 
tian virtue in her own life." 

Mr. Lewes was certainly a true and loving hus- 
band to George Eliot, which fact inclines us all 
the more to the belief that he was the same kind 
of a husband to the unhappy wife who deserted 
him for a lover. Let George Eliot herself speak 
in this connection: these are her words, which 
cast a strong and beautiful light upon her rela- 
tion to Mr. Lewes: 

"What greater thing is there for two human souls 
than to feel that they are joined for life to 
strengthen each other in all labor, to rest on each 
other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all 
pain, to be one with each other in silent, unspeakable 
memories at the moment of the last parting." 

In truth the relation which these two sustained 
to each other was precisely the kind described by 
George Eliot in her words above cited. It was 
all that love could ask, and it was all that purity 
and justice could require. 

Interesting in this connection is the story of 
the divorce of Lady Millais from the dis- 
tinguished art-critic, John Ruskin, and of her 
marriage with the great artist who has immortal- 
ized her rare beauty upon many a canvas known 
to lovers of whatever pleases the cultivated taste 
and imagination in all lands. In Lady Millais 
Nature provided the artist with face and figure 



LOVE AND LETTERS 13 

such as painters and sculptors delight to imitate 
in colors and reproduce in marble. But not only 
was she one of the most beautiful of women, she 
was as well marvellously brilliant and fascinating 
as a conversationalist. "She was a handsome, 
tall young woman," wrote one who knew her well, 
"with rosy cheeks and wavy black hair." Ruskin 
was much older than she, but he fell deeply in 
love with her; and she, then Euphemia Gray, a 
young and gay Scottish beauty, obeyed her par- 
ents, and gave the hand that sculptors delighted 
to contemplate to a man honest as the daylight, 
but often crabbed and opinionated, and in many 
ways ill-suited to her artistic, joyous, and mer- 
curial temper. The marriage was not a happy 
one. Her heart and spirits failed, and Ruskin 
could not but see that he had made one of the 
saddest of mistakes. All the world knew that he 
was a man of just spirit and kind heart. He 
did what he could to comfort and cheer his young 
wife, but the fates were against him. He was 
too wise a man not to know what Richter had 
known before him, that "the Fates and Furies 
glide with linked hands over life not less surely 
and swiftly than do the Graces and Sirens"; and 
he was as well too wise a man to contend against 
manifest destiny when at last arrived the auspi- 
cious moment for a noble and kindly self-sacri- 
fice. 

In 1854 John Millais was for a time with Rus- 
kin in Scotland. He painted Ruskin standing 
by the Falls of Glenfinias. The two men were 



14 LOVE AND LETTERS 

companionable and happy together. Long hours 
were spent in the most delightful fellowship. 
But Ruskin could not be blind to the fact that 
the young girl who by parental arrangement was 
his wife, but who had almost nothing in common 
with him, had in the society of the artist a new 
life. The enthusiasm ripened into love. With a 
generosity as astonishing as it was noble, John 
Ruskin placed the beautiful hand of the young 
wife in that of his friend, and, with a voice trem- 
ulous with emotion, gave them both his kindly 
blessing. A decree of nullity dissolved the old 
marriage that was not made in heaven, and on 
the third of June, 1855, the new union of Mil- 
lais and Mrs. Ruskin was celebrated at Dower's 
Well, Ruskin himself being present when his for- 
mer wife pronounced the solemn words that made 
her the life-long companion of another. 

There is, I think, in all literature no paragraph 
more touching than that in which Cotton Mather 
records his renouncement of the holiest of human 
affections, at what he believed to be the call of 
a Divine Love. He may have had before his 
mental vision the ancient story, so familiar to him 
and to men of his way of thinking, of the trial 
of Abraham's faith at Jehovah- j ireh, when the 
aged patriarch stretched out his hand to slay his 
son at the command of God. Our New Eng- 
land fathers were great literalists — they too 
often followed the letter rather than the spirit. 
Mather was a man of many pitiable mistakes, 
as the early annals of Massachusetts make only 



LOVE AND LETTERS 15 

too clear. If ever a human soul was surely mis- 
taken, this old Puritan preacher who thought 
to please his Heavenly Father by renouncing a 
dying wife was above aU others deceived. This is 
the sad paragraph: 

"When I saw to what a point of resignation I 
was now called of the Lord, I resolved, with His 
help, therein to glorify Him. So, two hours be- 
fore my lovely consort expired, I kneeled by her 
bedside, and I took into my two hands a dear hand, 
the dearest in the world. With her thus in my 
hands, I solemnly and sincerely gave her up unto 
the Lord: and in token of my real Resignation, I 
gently put her out of my hands, and laid away a 
most lovely hand, resolving that I would never 
touch it more. This was the hardest, and perhaps 
the bravest action that ever I did. She . . . 
told me that she signed and sealed my act of resig- 
nation. And though before that she called for me 
continually, she after this never asked for me any 



Whether Ruskin is to be approved or disap- 
proved will depend upon conditions underlying 
the decree of nullity, and which cannot be dis- 
cussed in this place. If the grounds were real 
and sufficient there remains nothing to be said. 
To the decree Ruskin consented, and to it the 
courts also agreed, and therefore there remains, 
I think, no ground for public discussion, even 
were such discussion seemly. 

Mr. Alger has well written in his "Friendships 
of Women.": 



16 LOVE AND LETTERS 

"The banes of domestic life are littleness, falsity, 
viilgarity, harshness, scolding vociferation, an in- 
cessant issuing of superfluous prohibitions and or- 
ders, which are regarded as impertinent interfer- 
ences with general liberty and repose, and are 
provocative of rankling or exploding resentments. 
The blessed antidotes that sweeten and enrich domes- 
tic life are refinement, high aims, great interests, 
soft voices, quiet and gentle manners, magnanimous 
tempers, forbearance from all unnecessary com- 
mands or dictation, and generous allowances of 
mutual freedom. Love makes obedience lighter 
than liberty. Man wears a noble allegiance, not as 
a collar, but as a garland. The Graces are never 
so lovely as when seen waiting on the Virtues; and, 
where they thus dwell together, they make a 
heavenly home." 

Love must have in it something larger and no- 
bler than passion. There must be oneness of 
sympathy, and delight in companionship founded 
upon a common ideal in life. Only through such 
an ideal is it possible to rise above the vulgar lit- 
tlenesses that make life barren. There seems to 
have been in the united lives of Lewes and the 
author of "Adam Bede" the ideal described. We 
find it in lesser degree, and yet as distinctly, in 
the love that made forever one the common des- 
tiny of Sir John Millais and the beautiful woman 
who was once the mismated wife of Ruskin. 
This same ideal (though the marriage was in this 
case perfectly regular if we leave out of sight its 
clandestine and "runaway" features) may be dis- 



LOVE AND LETTERS 17 

covered also in the one life and aspiration of 
Robert and Elizabeth Browning. 

Whatever is out of the common ordes of things 
is sure to draw down upon itself more or less ad- 
verse criticism. No greater harshness of judg- 
ment was apportioned to Lewes than was at an 
earlier period meted out to Martin Luther. 
Thousands of good men and women looked with 
the utmost abhorrence upon the marriage of the 
Reformer, himself a monk, with a nun who was 
under a vow of "perpetual chastity." In how 
different a light that marriage now presents it- 
self to us in this later age of the world! There 
was discovered some years ago in the Schloss 
Mainberg, not far from the city of Schweinfurt- 
on-the-Main, a valuable relic: it is the drinking 
cup which Lucas Cranach painted and gave to 
Luther on his wedding day. It is to us a very 
sacred treasure, but once it would have, been re- 
garded as not only of no value whatever as a 
memento, but as an accursed thing associated 
with the adulterous union of two persons who 
had no moral right to live together as husband 
and wife. Both monk and nun were wedded to 
the church. The binding obligation of the com- 
pact that thus joined them could be dissolved by 
death alone. Only Luther's followers, few in 
number, dared view the matter in a different 
light ; yet the time approaches when over all our 
earth the marriage of Luther will seem the right 
and natural thing it most certainly was. The 
time will alsa come when in the case of Lewes, 



18 LOVE AND LETTERS 

as in that of the Reformer, the spirit will take 
precedence over the letter, and the conventional 
will be lost sight of in a just and reasonable view 
of marriage. But the world will always find it 
hard to forgive George Eliot for the painful dis- 
loyalty to Lewes that connects itself with her 
second marriage. The union of Mr. Lewes and 
George Eliot wronged no one; it made two won- 
derful and beautiful lives happy; it added grace 
and sweetness to a home that was ideal; and it 
gave to the world literature that might other- 
wise have been, in part at least, denied it. Fool- 
ish is the remonstrance of an unenlightened con- 
science that lays such undue stress upon mere 
form. 

"Marriage is a matter of more worth 
Than to be dealt with by attorneyship." 

What Luther thought of his wife may be 
learned from his will, which was discovered in 
the archives of the Evangelical Synod of Hun- 
gary. To her he leaves all his property because 
*'she has always treated me as a pious and faith- 
ful wife should treat her husband; because she 
has always loved me, respected me, and taken 
care of me ; and because — Heaven be thanked for 
that rich blessing — she has given me five living 
children and educated them." He states still an- 
other reason for bequeathing all that he has to 
her: "Because I will not that she shall be de- 
pendent of the children, but the children shall 
be dependent of her, for they shall respect and 



LOVE AND LETTERS 19 

obey her, such as the commandment of God says." 
Evidently through all the ages there runs one 
law coming to life in good hearts under what- 
ever faith or civilization. That law was at work 
in Greek and Roman days as it was later in Ger- 
many, and still later in England. Pliny the 
younger wrote in his letter to the aunt of his 
wife Calpurnia these words that should be oftener 
printed and read: 

"She loves me, the surest pledge of her virtue; 
and adds to this a wonderful disposition to learn- 
ing, which she has acquired from her affection to 
me. She reads my writings, studies them, and even 
gets them by heart. You would smile to see the 
concern she is in when I have a cause to plead, 
and the joy she shows when it is over. She finds 
means to have the first news brought her of the 
success I meet with in court. If I recite anything 
in public, she cannot refrain from placing herself 
privately in some comer to hear. Sometimes she 
accompanies my verses with the lute, without any 
master except love, the best of instructors. From 
these instances I take the most certain omens of 
our perpetual and increasing happiness, since her 
affection is not founded on my youth or person, 
which must gradually decay, but she is in love with 
the immortal part of me." 

Always the essence of whatever is good will be 
found not in the form but in the thing itself. 
Religion, no matter what may be the system of 
theology embraced, is of the spiritual nature; so 
also is Love, when also a thing of the heart. In 



20 LOVE AND LETTERS 

the right-minded it is a pure flame and will honor 
"sanctimonious ceremonies," demanding as well 
where these may be had that they shall "with full 
and holy rite be ministered"; but never where no 
fault may be imputed, and yet these may not be 
observed, as in the case of Lewes and George 
Eliot, will the enlightened soul, through the false 
shame of a cowardly conscience, prove untrue to 
a supreme aflfection. Marriage in its highest and 
best sense is founded upon, and is the natural 
expression of, a supreme affection. This it is 
our poets have in mind when they write of "the 
marriage of souls." It endures after the pas- 
sion associated with its beginning is no more, and 
it remains even when marriage in its ordinary 
sense and significance does not supervene. After 
the death of Washington Irving there was found 
a lock of hair and a miniature which through long 
years he had cherished. He never forgot the 
young girl to whom, when a youth, his heart 
was given. She was snatched away by death, 
but he always regarded himself as hers. The 
first supreme affection is of the spiritual essence 
of marriage, though it may be no marriage in 
the usual sense of the word has ever taken place. 
But sometimes it so happens that the first union 
is not that of a supreme affection; then there 
yet remains sufficient room for its later blessing, 
and Avhat we call the second marriage may be in 
an ideal sense the first. Thus it was with John 
Stuart Mill, in whose "Autobiography" are these 
words : 



LOVE AND LETTERS 21 

"Between the time of which I have spoken and 
the present, took place the most important events 
of my private life. The first of these was my mar- 
riage, in April, 1851, to a lady whose incomparable 
worth had made her friendship the greatest source 
to me both of happiness and of improvement, during 
many years in which we never expected to be in 
closer relation to one another. Ardently as I could 
have aspired to this complete union of our lives at 
any time in the course of my existence at which 
it had been practicable, I, as much as my wife, 
would far rather have foregone that privilege for- 
ever than have owed it to the premature death of 
one for whom I had the sincerest respect, and she 
the strongest aflPection. That event, however, hav- 
ing taken place in July, 1849, it was granted to 
me to derive from that evil my own greatest good, 
by adding to the partnership of thought, feeling, 
and writing which had long existed, a partnership 
of our entire existence. For seven and a half years 
that blessing was mine; for seven and a half only! 
I can say nothing which could describe, even in 
the faintest manner, what that loss was and is. 
But because I know that she would have wished it, 
I endeavor to make the best of what life I have 
left, and to work on for her purposes with such 
diminished strength as can be derived from thoughts 
of her, and communion with her memory." 

The phraseology here was, no doubt, sug- 
gested to the mind of Mill by a long acquaint- 
ance with the teachings of Comte, to which he 
in large measure subscribed. Winwood Reade, 
who was an avowed disciple of the French philos- 



22 LOVE AND LETTERS 

opher, represents one of the characters in his 
book, "The Outcast," as addressing a friend who, 
like Mill, mourned the death of an almost idol- 
ized wife, in these words: 

"Preserve her memory; place her image on the 
altar of your heart; believe that she is the witness 
and judge of your actions and your thoughts; then 
your life will be noble and pure. Love without 
hope, then your love will be to you as a religion, 
for none so nearly approaches the love that is di- 
vine." 

Very interesting in this connection is the Mar- 
riage Document which Mr. MiU composed and 
signed in the stillness and seclusion of his library. 
No one can read the Document without perceiv- 
ing how noble was Mr. Mill's idea of marriage: 

"6th March, 1851. 
"Being about, if I am so happy as to obtain her 
consent, to enter into the marriage relation with 
the only woman I have ever known with whom I 
would have entered into that state; and the whole 
character of the marriage relation as constituted 
by law being such as both she and I entirely and 
conscientiously disapprove, for this among other 
reasons, that it confers upon one of the parties to 
the contract, legal power and control over the per- 
son, property, and freedom of action of the other 
party, independent of her own wishes and will; I, 
having no means of legally divesting myself of 
these odious powers (as I most assuredly would do 
if an engagement to that effect could be made 
legally binding on me), feel it my duty to put on 



LOVE AND LETTERS 23 

record a formal protest against the existing law of 
marriage, in so far as conferring such powers; and 
a solemn promise never in any case or imder any 
circumstances to use them. And in the event of 
marriage between Mrs. Taylor and me I declare it 
to be my will and intention, and the condition of 
the engagement between us, that she retains in all 
respects whatever the same absolute freedom of 
action, and freedom of disposal of herself and of all 
that does or may at any time belong to her, as if 
no such marriage had taken place; and I absolutely 
disclaim and repudiate all pretence to have acquired 
any rights whatever by virtue of such marriage. 

"J. S. Mill." 

Mr. Mill gives us In his "Autobiography" a 
number of beautiful allusions to the spiritual 
and intellectual worth of his wife, and many 
acknowledgments of his indebtedness to her in 
both his life and his work. He seemed to find 
satisfaction and comfort in these allusions and 
acknowledgments. In this he is not alone. 
Literature is full of examples of the most 
pathetic tenderness. Where the marriage- 
union is what it should be, death cannot destroy 
it. The "final catastrophe" which we await with 
what composure we can command may even in- 
crease the strength of love by subtracting from it 
such perishable elements as are of this earth 
alone. How many authors know, as did John 
Stuart Mill, that their success is that of an- 
other's brain — another's, yet their own. The 
writer of these lines is well assured that whatever 



24 LOVE AND LETTERS 

of worth or beauty it may have been given him 
to provide for the feast of life can be traced 
without doubt or hesitancy to the dear compan- 
ionship of a wife who is the gladness of his ex- 
istence and the inspiration of his working hours. 

Dr. Gumey, who was Mr. Mill's physician, is 
authority for the statement that Mr. Mill per- 
sisted in living at his residence in Avignon, 
though he knew that the place was unwhole- 
some. He refused to have the trees about the 
house cut down for fear the nightingales would 
be driven away ; and he would not leave Avignon 
because it was there he had lived with his wife 
through all those happy days he so delighted to 
remember. In the cemetery just beyond the city 
he had laid to rest all that was mortal of that 
dear wife; and, though erysipelas, of which Mr. 
Mill died, was known to be endemic in the valley 
where the house was situated, he would not go far 
from the tomb of his wife, which it was his 
custom to visit several times in a week. His de- 
votion to the memory of his wife at last cost him 
the few years he might have reasonably counted 
upon for work. Sad years they would have been, 
beyond all doubt, but they might have been use- 
ful to the world. 

Francis Ellingwood Abbot, whose death at his 
own hands closed most tragically a life of rare 
scholarship and of the finest aspirations, thus ded- 
icated his book, "The Syllogistic Philosophy," to 
which he had given so many years of the most 
careful investigation: 



LOVE AND LETTERS 25 

TO THE MEMORY 

OF 

MY WIFE 

IN WHOSE DIVINE BEAUTY OF CHARACTER 

LIFE AND SOUL 

I FOUND THE GOD I SOUGHT 

OCT. 18, 1839: OCT. 23, 1893 

SHE MADE HOME HAPPY, AND WAS ALL THE WORLD 
TO ME. 

It seems to the writer of this paper that Dr. 
Abbot comes as near as any one ever can to a 
demonstration of personal immortality. Where 
he leaves the question, so far as can be seen, we 
shall all of us have to leave it. An interesting fact 
in connection with his argument is that of the 
perpetual influence of the thought of his wife in 
both the discussion and the conclusions arrived at. 
Her death impressed him very much as that of 
Mrs. Mill impressed her husband; in both cases 
the relationship was intensely spiritual; in both 
cases the memory was almost of the nature of a 
religion. It was the memory of a "divine beauty 
of character, life and soul." Mr. Mill did not 
believe in immortality, while Dr. Abbot did; but 
both realized their highest aspirations in wedded 
love. Mr. Alger has well said in his "Friend- 
ships of Women," "As the ferment of passion 
ceases, the lees settle, and a transparent sympa- 
thy appears, reflecting all heavenly and eternal 
things." Of course the accidents and circum- 
stances of love change, as everything in life shows 



26 LOVE AND LETTERS 

us. The passionate elements, blissful but unrest- 
ful, fade, and slowly the tranquil orb of a spir- 
itual love rises in the clear evening of declining 
years. Ebers makes one of the characters in his 
novel, "An Egyptian Princess," say that love is 
always the same thing, and that people will love 
in every age as Sappho loved. There is a sense 
in which that is true; and yet human develop- 
ment, which includes the unfolding of the pas- 
sions, like a mighty river moves on, now in stately 
grandeur and now in foam and torrent, until at 
last the sea is reached and all the noise and tur- 
moil of life are forever hushed. 

There are those who represent married love as 
little more than an idealization of the sensual 
nature. They tell us that the spiritual element 
came in with the asceticism of early Christianity, 
when everything connected with the body was 
pronounced evil. But certainly love was not all 
of it sensual in the old Greek and Roman days, 
though, as Mr. Finck has pointed out in his 
"Primitive Love and Love-Stories," the popular 
belief has always been to the contrary. Finck 
quotes from Robert Wood's "Essay on the Origi- 
nal Genius and Writings of Homer," printed in 
1775, these words: "Is it not very remarkable 
that Homer, so great a master of the tender and 
pathetic, who has exhibited human nature in al- 
most every shape and under every view, has not 
given a single instance of the powers and effects 
of love, distinct from sensual enjoyment, in the 
'Iliad' ?" Well, whatever may or may not be true 



LOVE AND LETTERS 27 

of Homer's account of love in his day and in 
still more remote times, there certainly are to be 
found in ancient literature examples of romantic 
and spiritual love between the sexes. Of course 
the spiritual is often associated with the sensual, 
very much as it is in our own day, and in the 
lives of men and women personally known to 
us. Pericles and Aspasia may have been great 
sinners, but between them there was something 
vastly different from mere sensual gratification. 
Pericles was not a fool to be taken with a simper 
and a smile. He was an illustrious orator, states- 
man and warrior who for forty years was at the 
head of affairs in Athens. Aspasia, if she was 
a courtesan in any sense that may be attached 
to that word, was, nevertheless, a woman who 
could converse with Socrates about such themes 
as interested his great mind. Is it to be believed 
that her home, the centre of the finest culture 
and the most brilliant conversation, was only the 
cover for mere animal enjoyment.? When Seneca 
asked, "What can be sweeter than to be so dear 
to your wife that it makes you dearer to your- 
self," had he in mind nothing more than those 
attractions that might have rendered Pauhna 
pleasing to the sensuahst.? The phrase, common 
in that day, "As pale as Seneca's Paulina," re- 
pels the charge that mere sensual attraction was 
the foundation of all domestic life in Greek and 
Roman days. When the reformer Phocion 
had drunk the hemlock, his body was refused 
burial in Attic soil. No Athenian might kindle 



28 LOVE AND LETTERS 

the funeral pyre. But his wife, faithful to him 
after his death as during his life, came with her 
handmaids and Canopion, whose name Plutarch 
has preserved, and removed the body beyond the 
frontier. There she obtained fire, and the 
funeral pile was lighted. When the obsequies 
were ended she did not neglect the customary 
libations. Then that noble wife gathered up the 
bones of the one she loved more than any other 
person living or dead, and, in the darkness of 
night, she took them to her own house in Athens. 
Plutarch records that she buried the bones of her 
husband beneath her own hearthstone, and over 
them breathed this prayer: "Blessed hearth, to 
your custody I commit the remains of a good 
and brave man; and, I beseech you, protect and 
restore them to the sepulchre of his fathers when 
the Athenians return to their right minds." 

Of all loves, married love is the best. It has 
in it nothing of the lover's "cruel madness" and 
nothing of his "wild delight," but it has in it 
great peace and kindness. It is full of abiding 
confidence and of that beautiful accord which 
makes two lives to be but one. A visitor to the 
home of Wordsworth wrote : "I saw the old man 
walking in the garden with his wife. They were 
both quite old, and he was almost blind; but they 
seemed like sweethearts courting, they were so 
tender to each other and so attentive." There 
is a sunset love in its way quite as beautiful as 
is the more often praised love of youth's early 
morning. Poets of long ago celebrated it in 



LOVE AND LETTERS 29 

songs we translate and retranslate with en- 
thusiasm into every language all over the world. 
Thus Paulus Silentiarius sang of "Love in Old 
Age" — and he was not alone, for with him sang 
immortal ones whose voices sound out as sweetly 
and as full of melody to-day as once they 
sounded in the ears of generations long gone to 
rest: 

"Let others boast of charms divine. 
The agile step and graceful air; 
More lovely is thy wrinkled face. 
And threads of silver in thy hair. 

I'd rather fold thee in my arms 

Than press the sweetest maid that lives; 

Thy winter brings more warmth of love 
Than all her youthful summer gives." ^ 

As ordinary and even trivial words when trans- 
lated into tender music capture the most sluggish 
imagination and infuse into it new life, so a com- 
mon nature transfigured with beauty wins its 
way to the hardest heart. WeU writes the world's 
great poet: 

"All orators are dumb when beauty pleadeth." 

There is a beauty no artist can transfer to 
canvas, and no sculptor carve in marble ; a beauty 
we cannot behold with the eye, nor describe with 
pen or voice ; a beauty we can only feel as an un- 
defined presence. Not all souls are sensitive to 

^Marvin: "Flowers of Song from Many Lands," p. 75. 



30 LOVE AND LETTERS 

its Influence. A certain spiritual clairvoyance Is 
necessary in order to find it out, but when once 
discovered, its power over its discoverer is resist- 
less. We wonder what a certain woman could 
discern in a man who seemed to us dull and pro- 
saic, that induced her to leave all and follow him. 
She was not deceived. There were qualities in 
his character and presence we could neither see 
nor appreciate. A very shrewd and practical 
man said : "Judged by the wisdom of this world, 
and by the rules and maxims of policy, I am a 
fool to think of marrying the woman whose name 
I have spoken ; but I tell you honestly, that I 
would cheerfully part from all I have and all I 
hope to have, might I but call her 'wife.' " She 
was twenty years older than he, and socially his 
inferior; but they married and lived happily to- 
gether. George Eliot writes: "It is a deep 
mystery — the way the heart of man turns to one 
woman out of all the rest he's seen." It may be a 
deep mystery, but it would be a deeper one were 
it otherwise. 

Yet the anonymous author of "The History 
and Philosophy of Marriage" believes that man 
is by nature a polygamist, and that, left to him- 
self, under whatever religion or civilization, he 
inclines to more than one woman. He may love 
one woman more than any other, but he is never 
or seldom under the control of what has been 
•called a "supreme aff'ection" — that is to say, 
an exclusive affection. In his "Contarini Flem- 
ing," Lord Beaconsfield expresses a very differ- 



LOVE AND LETTERS 31 

ent belief when he tells us that "To a man who 
is in love the thought of another woman is unin- 
teresting, if not repulsive." That may be a 
strong way of expressing the exclusiveness of 
the supreme affection, but it accords with the 
general conviction of mankind, and it seems to 
be sustained by what we know of social relations 
in every age and land. There is a difference be- 
tween the East and the West. Oriental marriage 
is, as compared with marriage in England and 
America, a carnal and unspiritual relationship. 
The songs that celebrate it are voluptuous, and 
concern themselves for the most part with sen- 
sual gratification. The ideal element is want- 
ing, and so also is that supreme affection which 
centres in one love that endures because ideal 
rather than carnal. It is true of love as of 
religion, which is somewhat of the same nature, 
that the earthly passes away with the disappear- 
ing of youth, health, and material beauty; while 
the spiritual continues even when the person 
loved has long ceased to live. The love that 
enabled Ruskin to choose happiness for his wife 
rather than for himself was surely of an un- 
selfish nature, and we must acknowledge it to 
have been such whether we approve or disapprove 
of his great surrender. 

If again the reader's attention may be di- 
rected to the life and character of John Stuart 
Mill, it is quite to the point to add that with 
Mr. Mill love was something that not only sanc- 
tified the relation of the sexes and lifted it into 



32 LOVE AND LETTERS 

the realm of the ideal, but that also diffused 
in the heart a sentiment of kindness that dis- 
posed its possessor to be helpful to others. No 
sooner was Mill dead than Herbert Spencer pub- 
lished the fact that Mill had offered to guar- 
antee his publisher against loss by publishing his 
(Spencer's) works, although those works com- 
batted some of Mr. Mill's own views. Mr. 
Mill's life was full of a generous kindness, but 
that kindness, at least in its outward expression, 
was not a birthright. He was not naturally 
approachable. He was regarded as cold, un- 
sympathetic and distant. Only the select few 
were at home in his society. His later and more 
mature life, so rich in friendship and breadth 
of sympathy, he owed to that transforming love 
which lighted up for him the entire world. Even 
after the transformation there was still within 
him an element that at times awakened in others 
a spirit of antagonism. No sooner was Mr. 
Mill dead than another man having nothing of 
Spencer's friendship openly attacked Mill's 
reputation in a most vicious manner. Mr. James 
Hayward, a translator of "Faust" and a man 
of considerable ability, denounced Mr. Mill in 
The London Times as "an apostle of the phi- 
losophy of unbelief," and a man of impure doc- 
trine and life. To this the Rev. Stopford 
Brooke replied from his pulpit of a Sunday 
morning. But Mr. Hayward was not to be 
silenced so easily; he printed at his own cost a 
rejoinder in the shape of an open letter to Mr. 



LOVE AND LETTERS 33 

Brooke In which he repeated his attack with aug- 
mented fury. There were those who thought 
the point well taken when Mr. Hayward addressed 
to the preacher these caustic words : "Mr. Mill's 
scepticism certainly forms one reason among 
many why his praises should not have been ex- 
ceptionally and ostentatiously heralded from the 
pulpit of one of the Queen's chaplains." Surely 
the pulpit was not the place for that able de- 
fense, since Mr. Mill's views were not those which 
a Queen's chaplain would be expected to sup- 
port when he put on the surplice and undertook 
to recite the Athanasian creed. The preacher 
was in that matter as far removed from honesty 
as was George Eliot when she celebrated her 
second marriage in a Christian church and with 
a Christian service. But Mr. Brooke's vindi- 
cation expressed the feeling of cultivated men 
and women, and was in itself a noble argument. 
Of course the charge of immorality was based 
upon Mill's long years of friendship with the 
married woman who was afterward his wife; but 
those years furnished, in truth, no argument; 
for they were unmarked, so far as any human 
being ever knew, by the slightest departure from 
purity in word or deed. The sermon, though 
in a wrong place, still shows how vitally Mill 
had seized upon the public mind, and how deeply 
he had impressed the hearts of men. Something 
had changed him from the cold, unsympathetic 
thinker he was by nature, and had given him an 
affectionate place in the great Soul of Humanity. 



34 LOVE AND LETTERS 

It was beyond all doubt the transforming love of 
the gracious and noble woman through whom at 
last he came to view life in its entirety. 
Shelley wrote in his Journal : 

"Beware of giving way to trivial sympathies. 
Content yourself with one great afFection — ^with a 
single mighty hope; let the rest of mankind be the 
subjects of your benevolence, your justice and, as 
human beings, of your sensibility; but as you value 
many hours of peace, never suffer more than one 
ever to approach the hallowed circle." 

Shelley's philosophy, which is not so selfish as 
at first appears, was, consciously or otherwise, a 
governing principle in the lives of the men and 
women whose personal attachments we have 
studied. It is true that neither Lewes nor Mill 
was indifferent to the feelings, desires and neces- 
sities of mankind. The work which John 
Stuart Mill performed in his study, surrounded 
by his books, was one that had for its chief end 
the improvement of the condition of the common 
people. Neither of these men refused to con- 
fer with unpretending and lowly persons. Yet 
never did they wear their hearts upon their sleeves, 
for daws to peck at. A serene and noble re- 
serve shielded them from those wasteful intru- 
sions that cheapen life and exhaust power, while 
a supreme affection satisfied the profoundest de- 
sire and demand of iJie heart. To make use 
of a vulgar but expressive phrase that comes to 
us from a popular magazine, "We commonly live 



LOVE AND LETTERS 35 

all over the lot." Too many interests render 
the mind unfit for the faithful and competent 
care of any one of them that may appear more 
important than the others. So is it with a heart 
that, loving undiscriminatingly, never knows 
what a true and noble attachment really means. 
Few in this materialistic age of the world 
think of turning to the life of Jonathan Edwards 
for a story of sentiment and romance ; and yet 
not many pictures of pure love and exalted pur- 
pose are more attractive than is that in which 
the great philosopher and the Puritan maiden 
are brought before us in all the strength and 
sweetness of a supreme love that had within it a 
spiritual light exalting it above merely earthly 
attachments, and making it in a very true sense 
religious. Edwards first saw Sarah Pierrepont 
when she was a child of only thirteen summers, 
but even then there was something in her presence 
that distinguished her from other women of her 
years. Edwards tells us that notwithstanding 
her tender age she awakened in his heart a deep 
and permanent affection that was to have a won- 
derful influence over all his subsequent life, and 
that was to enrich and ennoble her own life 
as well. She has been described as the possessor 
of "a rare and lustrous beauty both of form and 
features." With this beauty. Dr. Dwight tells 
us, "there was joined a loveliness of expression, 
the combined result of goodness and intelligence." 
Another writer tells us that "there was a beau- 
tiful and natural religious enthusiasm of a mystic 



36 LOVE AND LETTERS 

character that illuminated and ennobled her 
face, and gave to even her common life a charm 
that captivated Edwards from the first moment 
of his meeting with her." When Edwards was in 
his twentieth year he wrote of Sarah Pierrepont, 
then in her thirteenth, this memorable passage, 
which Dr. Chalmers called one of the most elo- 
quent in all our English language : 

"They say there is a young lady in New Haven 
who is beloved of that great Being who made and 
rules the world, and that there are certain seasons 
in which this great Being, in some way or other 
invisible, comes to her and fills her mind with ex- 
ceeding sweet delight, and that she hardly cares for 
anything except to meditate on Him; that she ex- 
pects after a while to be received up where He is, 
to be raised up out of the world and caught up 
into heaven; being assured that He loves her too 
well to let her remain at a distance from Him al- 
ways. There she is to dwell with Him, and to be 
ravished with His love and delight forever. There- 
fore, if you present all the world before her, with 
the richest of its treasures, she disregards and 
cares not for it, and is unmindful of any pain or 
affliction. She has a strange sweetness in her 
mind, and singular purity in her affections; is most 
just and conscientious in all her conduct; and you 
could not persuade her to do anything wrong or 
sinful, if you would give her all the world, lest she 
should offend this great Being. She is of a won- 
derful calmness, and universal benevolence of mind; 
especially after this great God has manifested Him- 
self to her mind. She will sometimes go about 



LOVE AND LETTERS 37 

from place to place singing sweetly; and seems to 
be always full of joy and pleasure, and no one 
knows for what. She loves to be alone, walking in 
the fields and groves, and seems to have some one 
invisible always conversing with her." 

Thus did the young man Jonathan Edwards 
picture to himself the physically and spiritually 
beautiful Sarah Pierrepont. The more he saw 
of her the more he loved her. They were en- 
gaged, and he urged that the marriage should 
not be too long delayed. "Patience," he wrote 
her, "is commonly esteemed a virtue, but in this 
case I may almost regard it as a vice." When 
they were united, only a few months before his 
ordination, she was but seventeen years of age. 
Edwards had made no mistake. The lovely girl 
who held such wonderful communion with God, 
and whose marvellous beauty was equally that 
of person and of the spiritual nature, proved 
herself to be no idle dreamer. She made her 
husband's home at Northampton all it was in 
the power of any woman to make it. As a 
mother the record of her life challenges admira- 
tion at every turn. When her distinguished 
husband had increased his fame and had come to 
be regarded as a guide and leader in both intel- 
lectual and spiritual things, she moved by his 
side in all essential matters his companion and 
equal. Whitefield spent a few days in her home, 
and left his testimony for succeeding generations 
that in all his wanderings he had "never seen a 
sweeter couple." 



S8 LOVE AND LETTERS 

Edwards' external life was barren of adorn- 
ment; his home was plain; his table was simple; 
and his labors were scarcely appreciated by the 
uninstructed men and women for whom, during 
a large part of his ministry, he toiled. An 
ecclesiastical dispute in which he was wholly in 
the right disturbed his peace of mind, and drove 
him from the pulpit of a church in which he 
was deeply interested. We should none of us 
like to live as he lived, without art, travel, and 
the conveniences of modern civilization. Nothing 
could persuade us to go back to the tallow 
candle, the well in the back yard, and the weekly 
instead of the daily paper. We could not get on 
with a Concord coach since we have come to know 
the luxury of the steam railroad and of the 
automobile. We live in a better world than that 
in which Edwards lived. But in domestic life 
we do well if we are as fortunate and as happy 
as was he, notwithstanding all the beauty and 
comfort that enter our homes and make them 
attractive. His intellectual life was one the 
world will long remember, but his heart found 
its deepest satisfaction in a love that made the 
glory of public achievement seem poor, if not 
actually unattractive. The storm of discussion 
might rage without, but it could never reach that 
home of love. 

What shall be said of Warren Hastings, whom 
Lord Macaulay has immortalized in one of the 
noblest essays our language has known or is 
likely to know for many a year to come.? Few 



LOVE AND LETTERS 39 

of all the readers who have enjoyed that classic 
remember that the great Governor-General of 
India had in his life a romantic experience that 
entitles him to a place with the worthy ones who 
have illustrated for others the lasting power of 
the supreme aiFection. The lady who was later 
his wife was, when he first met her, the wife of 
a German Baron who, notwithstanding his title, 
was an artist, if the painting of very indifferent 
miniatures can make one an artist. Like the 
English painter Millais, our German Baron was 
an interested party in what has been facetiously 
called "the placing of a wife." But the English 
painter was a man of genius who received his 
wife as a gift of friendship from her husband, 
while the German Baron sold his wife for money 
which the distinguished Governor-General was 
only too glad to pay. Buskin's wife respected 
her husband though she did not love him ; but 
the beautiful consort of our second-rate and mer- 
cenary Baron Imhoif despised her lord and 
master as any self-respecting woman would have 
done in her distressing place. 

The story is this: Hastings met the Baron 
and his wife on the ship that transported him 
to India, where he served his country in a way 
that made him deserve more at her hands than 
he received, but not more than he would have 
received had there been no Impeachment and no 
wrongs leading up to that Impeachment. The 
Baroness Imhoff was a woman of genius and ac- 
complishments ; and Hastings was a man of rare 



40 LOVE AND LETTERS 

ability and fascination. It is not surprising that 
they came to love each other. But perhaps 
matters would have progressed no further had 
not Hastings fallen ill. Through all his sick- 
ness on the Duke of Grafton, for that was 
the name of the ship, the Baroness nursed him 
with womanly delicacy and tenderness ; and long 
before the voyage was ended the two were prac- 
tically pledged to a united life. There were no 
bitter words exchanged between husband and 
lover, nor was there any thought of a duel. Our 
Baron of the brushes and paint-pot had more 
need for money than for a wife; and, in truth, 
a wife like the Baroness Imhoff was to him an 
impediment and nothing more, unless her charms 
could be turned to financial profit. They were 
capable of such conversion; and the new rela- 
tion sustained by the accomplished woman was 
due to the tenderest love on the part of Hast- 
ings and equally to the most sordid selfishness 
on the part of her husband. Governor-General 
Hastings and the Baroness ImhofF lived together 
only after the successful prosecution of the suit 
against her husband for divorce. In 1777 the 
divorce was obtained, and soon after the lovers 
were united in marriage. The Baron rejoiced 
in the possession of a much larger fortune than 
his art, if such it might be called, had ever 
brought him, and with the improvement of his 
financial condition he disappears from view, and 
we hear no more of him. For nearly fifty years 



LOVE AND LETTERS 41 

Hastings and his wife by purchase lived together 
in happy wedlock. Of her Macaulay wrote, 
"She had an agreeable person, a cultivated mind, 
and manners in the highest degree pleasing." 
That she was as the distinguished essayist de- 
scribed her to be is in some measure proved by 
the favor she found in the sight of such accom- 
plished and good women as Fanny Bumey and 
Hannah More, and also by the regard for her 
which King George HI. and Queen Charlotte 
entertained. Hastings loved her with a manly 
and tender affection. Of her he wrote when for 
a brief season separated from her, "Yesterday 
morning I held in my arms all that my heart 
holds dear; O my Marian, I love you more by 
far than life! When shall I again see you.?" 
She was much younger than he, and she sur- 
vived him many years, through all of which she 
remained his widow, faithful to his memory as 
she had been faithful to him during the happy 
years of their wedded life. 

Emerson's line, "All men love a lover," has 
become a proverb. Love is everywhere recog- 
nized as the primitive and everlasting passion, 
universally felt. With it our race began its 
career, and through its Divine allurements that 
race has continued to inhabit a planet that were 
else desolate as the dead moon that at night lights 
with borrowed glory the vast expanse above our 
heads. In this supreme passion earth and heaven 
seem united: 



42 LOVE AND LETTERS 

"In heaven ambition cannot dwell, 
Nor avarice in the vaults of hell; 
Earthly these passions, as of earth. 
They perish where they have their birth; 
But Love is indestructible." 

Old Egypt and our new Republic that was 
but yesterday bom into the family of nations 
are welded together in the eternal circle of this 
passion. It is not long ago that there was 
dug up in Chaldea an ancient love letter traced 
in clay. The clay, baked in an oven, had 
hardened until it was so firm and enduring that 
not a line nor even a letter could be effaced 
without great effort. How old is that love 
letter? No one knows. But of this we may be 
sure; it was written more than two thousand 
years ago. The young woman lived, so far as 
we can discover, in Sippera; and her lover was 
a resident of Babylon. The epistle reads thus: 

"To the lady Kashbuya says Gimil Marduk this: 
May the Sun God of Marduk afford you eternal 
life. I write that I may know how your health is. 
Oh, send me a message about it. I live in Babylon 
and have not seen you, and for this reason I am 
very anxious. Send me a message that will tell 
me when you will come to me, so that I may be 
happy. May you live long for my sake." 

That old clay love letter, written so many 
hundreds of years ago, is not very unlike, ex- 
cept in its ancient phrasing, the tender missives 
of later times. Here are words of noble affection 



LOVE AND LETTERS 43 

written by Charles I. to Henrlette Marie, 
daughter of Henry IV. of France, when she was 
coming to join him: 

"Dear Heart: I never knew till now the good 
of ignorance, for I did not know the danger thou 
wert in by the storm before I had assurance of thy 
happy escape, we having had a pleasing false re- 
port of thy safe landing at Newcastle, which thine 
of the 19th of January so far confirmed us in that 
we were at least not imdeceived of that hope till 
we knew certainly how great a danger thou hast 
passed, of which I shall not be out of apprehension 
until I have the happiness of thy company. 

"For indeed I think it not the least of my mis- 
fortunes that for my sake thou hast run so much 
hazard. But my heart being full of admiration 
for thee, affection for thee, and impatient passion 
of gratitude to thee, I cannot but say something, 
leaving the rest to be read by thee out of thine own 
noble heart. Charles R." 

Henry IV. was an enthusiastic lover, but I 
cannot say that he was a very constant or faith- 
ful lover. Here are three letters that he ad- 
dressed to his "Dear Heart," Madam de Lian- 
court :, 

"My Beautiful Love: Two hours after the ar- 
rival of this messenger, you will see a cavalier who 
loves you very much; they call him the King of 
France and of Navarre, an honorable title certainly, 
but very troublesome — that of your subject is much 
more delightful; the three together are good with 
any sauce, and I am resolved to give them up to 



44 LOVE AND LETTERS 

no one. (This 12th September, from our delicious 
deserts of Fontainebleau.) " 

"My True Heart, . . . You declare that 
you love me a thousand times more than I love you. 
You have lied, and you shall maintain your lie with 
the arms which you have chosen. ... I shall 
not see you for ten days — it is enough to kill me. 
I will not tell you how much I mind: it would make 
you too vain," 

"My Darling Love, — March 1st. The fields are 
much sweeter than the town. Good-morning, my 
all!" 

Some of the best love letters that have been 
preserved, viewed as literature, are from royal 
lovers. Why is it that a class of men who so 
seldom succeed in literature as such are so pe- 
culiarly successful in these delicate missives of 
the heart .f* 

Thus Cromwell addressed his wife, who forgot, 
as many a wife has done since his day and as 
many a wife will do in the future, how full the 
mind and heart of a public man may be of great 
affairs and great services: 

"My Dearest: I have not leisure to write much; 
but I could chide thee that, in many of thy letters, 
thou writest to me that I should not be unmindful 
of thee and thy little ones. Truly, if I love you 
not too well, I think I err not on the other hand 
much. Thou art dearer to me than any creature, let 
that suffice. I rest thine 

"Oliver Cromwell." 



LOVE AND LETTERS 45 

lAfter twenty years of happy married life 
Washington thus gently chided his anxious wife : 

"My Dearest Life and Love: You have hurt 
me, I know not how much, by the insinuation in 
your last that my letters to you have been less fre- 
quent because I have felt less concern for you. 
The suspicion is most unkind. Have we lived al- 
most a score of years in the closest and dearest 
conjugal intimacy to so little purpose that on the 
appearance only of inattention to you, and which 
you might have accounted for in a thousand ways 
more natural and more probable, you should pitch 
upon that single motive which alone is injurious 
to me.'' 

" I have not, I own, wrote so often to you as I 
wished and as I ought, but think of my situation 
and then ask your heart if I be without excuse. We 
are not, my dearest, in circumstances most favorable 
to our happiness; but let us not, I beseech you, idly 
make them worse by indulging in suspicions and 
apprehensions which minds in distress are but too 
apt to give way to. Your most faithful and tender 
husband. G. W." 

Here are equally tender and beautiful words 
written by Edgar Allan Poe to his wife in a time 
of great trial: 

"My Dear Heart, My Dear Virginia: Our 
mother will explain to you why I stayed away from 
you this night. Of my last great disappointment 
1 should have lost my courage but for you, my little 
darling wife. I shall be with you to-morrow, and 
be assured until I see you, I will keep in loving 



46 LOVE AND LETTERS 

remembrance your last words and your fervent 
prayer. May God grant you a peaceful summer 
with your devoted Edgar." 

Love letters are a literature in themselves, and 
are wholly unlike other kinds of composition. 
Their writers, with marvellous delicacy, place 
upon paper what nothing could induce them to 
say with the living voice. Though the writer 
be no poet, yet is his letter crowded with fine fig- 
ures of rhetoric, metaphors, and sentimental and 
impassioned bursts of feeling. Not infrequently 
the composition deepens to a religious intensity 
that touches the thought with something like 
inspiration. Letters of every kind but those of 
love go out of fashion. Telegraph and tele- 
phone have rendered unnecessary much of our 
ordinary correspondence. Business letters are 
now typewritten by clerks and scribes of one 
kind or another; but always the love letter is a 
personal matter. No woman could endure a 
machine-made love letter. The charm of style, 
the delicate suggestiveness, must come from the 
very hand of the man beloved. 

What could be more beautiful than these im- 
passioned lines, so full of devotion, which Gari- 
baldi sent to his wife at a time when the eyes 
of all Europe were upon him, and when every 
moment was precious: 

" Your face, my little one, is with me every hour, 
encouraging and solacing me when my heart sinks 
low with fears of what may be. I thought I had 



LOVE AND LETTERS 47 

tasted all the sweetness of love's cup when I first 
embraced my Anita, the mother of my children, in 
a silence that was an ecstasy; but now I know that 
there are peaks higher than the Alps, and that there 
is a heaven higher and purer and sweeter than any 
I first explored in the ardor of youth. God keep 
you, my darling, and restore me to your arms." 

Women of active and vigorous mind are 
usually endowed with pronounced sexual in- 
stincts, and are warm-hearted and affectionate, 
though there are such exceptions as George 
Sand and certain other French women of genius 
who, though irregular in their social relations, 
are yet incapable of anything like true and en- 
during love. The case is somewhat different 
with men. It is strange that so many intellectual 
men are physically incapacitated for married 
life. Ruskin, of whom mention has been made, 
was in some measure an illustration of what we 
have in mind. The case of Carlyle is also in- 
teresting in this connection. Perhaps Carlyle 
might have mended matters for himself and for 
his gifted wife as weU, had he been able in early 
married life to place the hand of his wife in 
that of Edward Irving, who surely loved her and 
whose life might have been very different had 
he shared it with her. Cowper, the English 
poet, was beset by gentle attentions that would 
have been withheld had the real state of the case 
been known. And even John Stuart Mill, whose 
noble and beautiful love is celebrated in his own 
account of his life, loved with a love that was 



48 LOVE AND LETTERS 

bejond all doubt largely of the soul. Sterne 
declared that he "must always have a Dulcinea 
dancing' in his head" ; but it may be said with 
truth that for him no Dulcinea ever elsewhere 
long wooed him with "poetry of motion." In 
his cold and contracted heart there was scant 
space for terpsichorean charm of any kind. 
Sterne could write of love as few men could 
write, but of the thing itself he knew little. 
Balzac has been regarded as a man of loose life, 
but a large part of his licentiousness was on paper 
only. His libertinism, like that of Sterne, was 
mostly a matter of pen and ink. He coveted for 
himself, it would seem, what most men call shame, 
but the will was vastly ahead of the deed. Yet 
for all-in-all his life was, no doubt, far from be- 
ing what good men and women like to contem- 
plate. To writers such as we have described the 
dream of love is largely of the nature of literary 
capital. But it must not come too near to the 
man himself, nor may it become too real. Lan- 
dor wrote what these believed, that "absence is 
the invisible and incorporeal mother of ideal 
beauty." 

The violent passion of youth, when "Nature, 
red of tooth and fierce of claw, only looking to 
the perpetuation of the species, blindly drives 
men and women to each other with irresistible 
force," to employ the picturesque and strong 
words of Mr. T. P. O'Connor in a recent maga- 
zine article, is what we commonly call love. And 
yet this lower, though most essential, attraction 



LOVE AND LETTERS 49 

of the sexes, that our novelists and poets have so 
constantly in mind, is not love at all in the best 
sense of that word. Not infrequently the term 
stands for simple unadorned lust which, though 
it is not without its mission, is described with 
propriety only in medical and scientific works. 
No one will deny to George Sand rare talent, and 
we may say genius, for her gifts of insight and 
expression are marvellous. John Stuart Mill was 
not astray when he wrote: "As a specimen of 
purely artistic excellence, there is in all modern 
literature nothing superior to the prose of 
Madame Sand, whose style acts upon the nervous 
system like a symphony of Hayden or Mozart." 
Yet in the last analysis the stories of the gifted 
author of "Indiana" and "Mauprat" do not de- 
scribe love. In them we have animal appetite 
and social revolt, but we look in vain through 
their pages for that enduring love which unites 
in one life — ^tender, self-sacrificing, and true — 
the single destiny of one man and the one woman 
of his choice. A few short tales like "Fadette" 
or "Fran9ois the Waif" may not be open to 
criticism, but these only make more apparent the 
truth of what has been said by the sharp contrast 
which they present. 

There was a singular propriety in Madame 
Dudevant's selection of a masculine name for her 
literary personality. She played a man's part. 
It was she who plotted the elopement, and cap- 
tured the weak and willing Alfred de Musset. 
Hers was all the courage and determination. 



50 LOVE AND LETTERS 

With him she shared the demand for social and 
domestic liberty, but hers alone was the uncom- 
promising purpose and the strong will. Eliza- 
beth Barrett Browning's "Recognition," addressed 
to George Sand, gives us the close association 
of strong will with womanly passion and feeling ; 
but it implies a conflict between the feminine na- 
ture and the assumed masculine role of which we 
discover no suggestion in the life of the woman. 

"True genius, but true woman ! dost deny 
Thy woman's nature with a manly scorn. 
And break away the gauds and armlets worn 
By weaker women in captivity? 
Ah, vain denial! that revolted cry 
Is sobbed in by a woman's voice forlorn: 
Thy woman's hair, my sister, all unshorn, 
Floats back dishevelled strength in agony. 
Disproving thy man's name; and while before 
The world thou burnest in a poet-fire. 
We see thy woman-heart beat evermore 
Through the large flame. Beat purer, heart, 

and higher, 
Till God unsex thee on the heavenly shore, 
Where unincarnate spirits purely aspire." 

While it is one of the chief purposes of mar- 
riage to transmit life and all that renders life 
desirable to future generations, such transmission 
is by no means the only end and intent of mar- 
riage. Doubtless two lives may be sometimes 
united to the advantage of both where there is 
not even a possibility of happiness, but it will be 
found that few men and hardly one woman wiU 



LOVE AND LETTERS 61 

be able long to endure the bondage of so un- 
natural a union. To the human heart happiness 
is the very breath of life. We may not be able 
to say with Pope that it is "our being's end and 
aim," but experience proves it to be an essential 
element in well-being. There have been noble 
characters matured in darkness, but for one such 
there have been thousands of stunted characters 
that came to their ruin through want of light. 
We must have some measure of happiness; with- 
out it the man is as a plant deprived of hght. A 
happy home is no idle dream of the poet. In 
every age and land the heart of man demands it 
as an essential and supreme good. Domestic hap- 
piness may not be what Cowper calls it, "the 
only bliss of Paradise that has survived the fall," 
but it certainly is that without which life must 
lose no small part of its value. Home is, or 
should be, the place of confidence, where there 
are no masks and no suspicions. In every lan- 
guage under the sun the human heart voices 
through some proverb its conscious need of, and 
its delight in, the domestic circle. It is said of 
an Enghshman's house, "it is his castle"; and 
again they tell us that "home is always home, be 
it never so homely." The French proverb runs, 
"To every bird its nest is fair." The German 
cries, "East and West, the home is best." In 
many a Spanish rhyme we read that "the smoke 
of one's own house is better than the fire of an- 
other's." 

The "Love Letters of Mary Wollstone- 



52 LOVE AND LETTERS 

craft," addressed to Gilbert Imlay, show us how 
love may blind at once both mind and heart. Im- 
lay was a worthless voluptuary and a cruel senti- 
mentalist who lived for the hour, with no thought 
of either responsibility or consequences. He had 
little to recommend him beyond good looks and 
a pleasing presence. Yet a woman of remark- 
able mind, noble and affectionate heart, and rare 
courage could so deceive herself with regard to 
his character as to render possible the astonish- 
ing letters that chronicle at once her shame and 
his worthlessness. With him for a time she lived, 
and with him she would have lived all her days 
had he been able to return in even a limited degree 
the wealth of noble passion and pure love which 
she so generously bestowed upon him. There 
were no legal ties to make him responsible for her 
maintenance and for that of her child and his. 
Had there been such ties her proud spirit would 
have scorned a support reluctantly rendered by a 
faithless lover; though it may be she would have 
thought it just and in every way right that a 
father should provide in some measure at least for 
the education of his own daughter. When Imlay 
began to forsake the noble woman whose love he 
had won, it was their child that sustained her fail- 
ing confidence. She wrote him from Paris, where 
she was living without him: 

"Since my arrival here, I have found the German 
lady of whom you have heard me speak. Her first 
child died in the month; but she has another about 
the age of my Fanny, a fine little creature. They 



LOVE AND LETTERS 63 

are still but contriving to live — earning their daily 
bread — yet, though they are but just above pov- 
erty, I envy them. She is a tender, affectionate 
mother — fatigued even by her attention. However, 
she has an affectionate husband in her turn, to ren- 
der her care light and to share her pleasure. 

"I will own to you that, feeling extreme tender- 
ness for my little girl, I grow sad very often when 
I am playing with her, that you are not here to 
observe with me how her mind unfolds and her little 
heart becomes attached. These appear to me to be 
true pleasures — and still you suffer them to escape 
you, in search of what we may never enj oy." 

Mary WoUstonecraft was an idealist, but the 
men and women of whom this world has heard 
much and for whom it cherishes the largest ad- 
miration, have been found, not among the unim- 
aginative and matter-of-fact toilers, but among 
the sons and daughters of inspiration. It is the 
"breath of their inspiration" that is "the life of 
each generation." The Sacred Writer exclaims, 
"Where there is no vision, the people perish." 
He had in mind, of course, things spiritual, but 
his statement holds good for the entire world of 
mental and ethical realities. The sentimental 
side of life is as real as is the commercial or the 
severely scientific; and equally real is the ideal. 
The materialist wiU have no universe he cannot 
put into a crucible and melt down, yet all around 
him is the beauty of another world — a beauty 
that challenges at every point the clear, cold and 
exacting analysis of physical science. 



54 LOVE AND LETTERS 

Of all the idealizing elements in our human 
economy love comes first and lingers longest. 
Certainly for the woman of whom we are now 
writing it wrought a marvellous transformation, 
changing common dross into pure gold; making 
from ordinary material a model of everything 
noble and of real worth in the possibilities of our 
human nature. Even positive proof of Imlay's 
infidelity led her not so much to blame him as to 
censure her own conduct. Her letters of love 
addressed to him are not unlike the letters of 
Heloise in their self-eifacing devotion. 

So has it been with the daughters of Eve from 
the very beginning of time ; and so, no doubt, will 
it be so long as life endures. It was this same 
wonder-working love that made Bonnie Prince 
Charlie seem to the heart of Louise of Stolberg 
so worthy a man when certainly he was nothing 
of the kind. And yet, perhaps, she was not so 
greatly deceived after all; for it was with little 
or no difficulty that she later installed in her af- 
fections the brilliant but austere Alfieri. And no 
sooner was the poet gone from our earth than a 
sweet-tempered and lovable painter whose pictures 
no one will ever greatly covet stepped with proud 
assurance into that poet's place. The Countess 
of Albany did not break her heart over any of 
these. The Bonnie Prince was fifty-two and she 
was but twenty when the priest united them in a 
marriage with which Heaven had little to do. 
The marriage has been described as that of "a 
golden beauty with hazel eyes and a wild-rose 



LOVE AND LETTERS 55 

skin" to "a gaunt, elderly man of red, bloated 
face, made redder by the contrast of a white 
wig and the reflection from a crimson silk suit 
crossed with the Ribbon of the Garter." An 
older description of the Prince represents him as 
"dull, thick, silent-looking about the lips which 
were purplish, with pale-blue eyes tending to a 
watery greyness, and having something inex- 
pressibly sad, gloomy, helpless, vacant and debased 
in the whole face." Vernon Lee vouches for the 
later description, which is taken from a crayon 
portrait of the time and, no doubt, from hfe. 
The husband was jealous of his lovely wife of 
*'golden beauty," and not without cause. It is 
not in the least surprising that when she awoke 
in the morning and found by her side a man 
drunk as only a Scotchman can be, she wished 
for a very different awakening and for the sweet 
embrace of another whose name, it may be, she 
even then knew only too well. The husband's 
savage jealousy became more exacting. Her 
room could be entered only through his, and he 
was insolent and vulgar enough to declare that 
he was "resolved that the succession should not be 
dubious." That she concerned herself little about 
his very inconsequent succession the sequel of her 
life makes clear. The fortunes of the House of 
Stuart became odious in her sight. Insult upon 
insult, crowned by a drunken attempt upon her 
unhappy life, broke the last link.^ 

1 "The Stuarts must not be allowed to die out !" was the 
cry of the French Ministry towards 1772. That House 



56 LOVE AND LETTERS 

A supreme affection means for most of us one 
true marriage, and one only. In this lies the 
secret of monogamy. Perhaps it is not quite 
true, though we have Lord Beaconsfi eld's word 
for it, that "to the man in love, the thought of 
another woman is uninteresting, if not re- 
pulsive"; but it certainly is true that a supreme 
affection which is the only right foundation for 
marriage means as well an exclusive affection. 
Love is the fire in this human life of ours whereat 
we warm our hearts, and so give them cheer in a 
world where there are so many things to distress 
and affright. Thus, in finer words, Mrs. Brown- 
ing expresses this same thought : 

"Yet love, mere love, is beautiful indeed. 
And worthy of acceptation. Fire is bright. 
Let temple bum, or flax! An equal light 
Leaps in the flame from cedar-plank or weed. 
And love is fire; and when I say at need, 
I love thee . . . mark . . . / love thee! 

in thy sight 
I stand transfigured, glorified aright, 
With conscience of the new rays that proceed 

could be of service to France, for against England a Pre- 
tender would be a priceless weapon. But unless Charles 
Edward could be induced to marry, that House would 
most certainly die, for his brother had become a priest 
when he was father only of an illegitimate daughter. 
Charles Edward had always refused to marry, so a pen- 
sion of forty thousand crowns was offered, and at once 
he married Louise, the nineteen-year-old daughter of 
Prince Gustavus Adolphus of Stolberg-Gedern, Prince of 
the Empire, who was kiUed in the battle of Leuthen. 



LOVE AND LETTERS 57 

Out of my face toward thine. There's nothing 

lowi 
In love, -when love the lowest; meanest creatures 
Who love God, God accepts while loving so; 
And what I feel across the inferior features 
Of what I am, doth flash itself, and show 
How that great work of Love enhances Nature's." 

The morganatic marriage is defined as a mar- 
riage in which one of the contracting persons is 
of a much, higher rank than is the other, and in 
which it is agreed that the person of humbler 
station shall make no claim for himself or her- 
self or for the children of such marriage upon 
the title, standing, or property of the person of 
more exalted rank. Thus defined, the mor- 
ganatic marriage, though it may be a contemptible 
and unjust depriving of an honest wife of her 
natural rights and dignity as wife and a wronging 
of the children, is not of necessity what is in 
common phrase immoral. But the morganatic 
marriage is not infrequently a temporary union. 
The Prince, when the time arrives for him to 
enter upon the responsibility and dignity of sov- 
ereignty, must repudiate his morganatic family 
and marry a woman of a rank approaching his 
own. The first marriage (call it morganatic or 
what you will) is a true and real marriage, but 
the second is bigamous. It is a pitiful thing that 
a sovereign should be called upon to repudiate 
an affectionate wife, and children that look to 
him for name and place, in order that he may rule 



58 LOVE AND LETTERS 

over a nation that calls itself Christian. That 
adultery should be trusted to provide an heir for 
the throne where a pure and honest marriage is 
repudiated is a marvellous thing in this late age 
of the world's history. Even still more aston- 
ishing is the fact that distinguished prelates in 
a Christian church who insist upon the sacredness 
of the seventh commandment account their sov- 
ereign so far superior to their God that royalty 
may be allowed to set aside the sacred command 
without rebuke. These prelates assist at the cor- 
onation, and one of their number is, by virtue of 
his station, expected to place the crown upon the 
royal head. 

The Archduke Francis, who will, in all proba- 
bility, become the Emperor of Austria before 
many years, is united in morganatic marriage 
with the Countess Sophie Chotek de Chotkowa. 
She is represented as a very plain woman, but as 
a woman of great accomplishments and wonderful 
tact. A recent author described her as "sallow 
and scrawny," but he admitted her remarkable 
ability. She it was who changed the rollicking 
and roistering Prince into a serious, shrewd, and 
subtle man — into the hope of Austria. Mr. 
Alexander Powell, in the Travel Magazine for 
June, 1910, has this to say of the marvellous 
influence of this wonderful woman over the com- 
ing ruler of Austria: 

"It was a reformed rake who knelt on the prie 
dieux in the little Reichstadt chapel to take the 
marriage vows. It was the subtlest diplomat in 



LOVE AND LETTERS 59 

Europe who rose to take his place in the shadows 
of the Imperial throne, there to pull the strings 
which control the utterances of statesmen, the move- 
ments of fleets and armies and the policies of na- 
tions. Already he has repainted the map of South- 
eastern Europe and set every Continental chancellery 
in an uproar. The empire is under his thumb as 
completely as Egypt was under that of Lord Cro- 
mer. He it was who tore up the Treaty of Berlin 
and, blowing the pieces in the faces of the signatory 
Powers, coolly annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina to 
the empire. It was he who backed up Ferdinand 
of Bulgaria in his successful revolt against Ottoman 
rule and he who stiffened the backbone of Austria 
in its belligerent reception of the Russian protests." 

It is represented that the Archduke is devoted 
to his wife and children, and that he will never 
under any circumstances desert them. But we 
shall see of what stuff he is made when he is called 
to the sovereignty of his great country. 

The Sacred Writer associates the vision of 
God with purity of heart in that wonderful beati- 
tude, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall 
see God." Under the shadow of so gracious a 
promise there has grown up that noxious plant 
of priestly sowing known as Sacerdotal Celibacy. 
There is more in the name than is indicated, for 
the associating of sexual life with uncleanness is 
responsible for religious virgins and various kinds 
of unwholesome saints. These, and more like 
them, are men and women of polluted minds and 
hearts ; they have no knowledge of the Divine 



60 LOVE AND LETTERS 

Vision that comes with love for God and a clean 
life. It was Gregory the Great who gave the 
Christian priesthood its first serious impulse in 
the direction of celibacy and who crowned vir- 
ginity as a thing in itself peculiarly pleasing to 
a holy God. And this he did with the writings 
of the Apostle Paul open before him. In that 
Apostle's First Epistle to Timothy we read that 
a Bishop must be "the husband of one wife" — 
that is to say, "of but one wife," for in his day 
polygamy was common. This same Apostle 
warned the church that in the latter times seduc- 
ing spirits should speak "lies in hypocrisy, having 
their consciences seared with a hot iron, for- 
bidding to marry." There had been something 
of the kind among pagan peoples, and all the 
more readily, therefore, did the church, which in 
many places had directly succeeded heathenism, 
accommodate itself to the views and requirements 
of Gregory the Great and his coadjutors. But, 
nevertheless, celibacy of the clergy came very 
gradually. It was opposed to human nature, for 
everywhere and at all times men and women dis- 
cover in each other the source of a common felic- 
ity. From the union of the sexes springs not 
only life itself, but that which gives to life all 
that is noblest and purest. 

Celibacy was not actually imposedupon the clergy 
as a binding obligation before the time of Pope 
Hildebrand; and he, observing its harmful effect 
on the church, contemplated revoking his own or- 
der. His successors, however, insisted upon celi- 



LOVE AND LETTERS 61 

bacy, and as a natural consequence impurity soon 
prevailed. Those among the clergy who aspired 
to sacred honors embraced at once the single life, 
devoid of those domestic cares and duties that 
interfere with the pursuit of such rewards as are 
sought after by personal ambition. The power 
of the clergy was greatly increased. Nuns re- 
ceived the same veneration that had once clothed 
Vestals with sacred glory in the ardent imagina- 
tion of ignorant people to whom nuns and other 
religious persons were often called to minister, 
and to whom they did minister with a self-abne- 
gation and devotion strangely at variance with 
the greed of place and power so common at that 
time in religious circles. Everywhere there was 
a lowering of the standard of sexual morality, 
and a development of most degrading semi-re- 
ligious pruriency. In the "Dialogues" of Greg- 
ory the Great, Ursinus, a priest, is represented 
as having lived an unnatural life ; for forty years 
he dwelt with his wife as a brother might properly 
live with a sister, abstaining during the entire 
time from the nearer intimacy of married life. 
At last, when he was nigh unto death, his wife, 
moved by affection for one who was her husband 
in little else than name, and not being certain that 
he was still alive, placed her hand near his per- 
son. Instantly he shrank from her touch, ex- 
claiming, "Get hence, woman! — a little fire re- 
mains — away with the straw!" Of Leo I. this 
monstrous falsehood is told: A woman, upon a 
certain occasion, kissed his hand, and he was so 



62 LOVE AND LETTERS 

inflamed by the touch of her lips that, to punish 
himself, he deliberately cut the hand off. 

Instances of emasculation are very common in 
the chronicles of the saints. Origen submitted 
to mutilation, and he was sure he had Divine 
authority for his act. He found in the Gospel 
according to Matthew these words over which he 
brooded long, "There be eunuchs which have made 
themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of Heaven's 
sake." Origen was a venerable father of the 
Church, a theologian, and a philosopher, and the 
author of valuable Commentaries on the Scrip- 
tures. Why should not his example be imitated? 
It was imitated, not only because religion seemed 
to approve, but because it fell in with a spirit of 
luxury as vile as it was sentimentally pious. Chil- 
dren were castrated to qualify them for singing 
in the Papal Choir. Castrato and musico del 
Papa were, in the minds of the common people, 
the same thing. "Because of their sacred 
wounds," said a wise doctor, "these blessed ones 
sing like the angels in Heaven." Later the art 
of castration was carried to perfection. Voltaire 
tells us that in his day the following words were 
to be seen at Naples over the doors of certain 
barbers, "Qui f, castrano maramgliosamente i 
puti" — "Here boys are castrated in a most ad- 
mirable manner." This was certainly an improve- 
ment upon the self-castration of Origen. The 
fine soprano solos which charm the worshipers in 
Italian churches are sung by eunuchs. The op- 
era-singer Velluti, whose musical performances 



LOVE AND LETTERS 63 

delighted all Europe, was, when a child, castrated 
for the choir of the Papal Chapel at Rome. 
Sometimes the devil was defeated in his machina- 
tions, but not always. 

Evil spirits not infrequently appeared in the 
form and with the face of a woman. Such 
appearances were most deadly. When St. 
Pachomius and St. Palaemon were convers- 
ing together in the desert, a young monk, 
wild with anguish and terror, ran to them, and, 
falling down at their feet, declared that a woman 
of surpassing beauty had entered his cell and 
seduced him, after which she had miraculously 
vanished, leaving him well nigh dead upon the 
ground. Having told his tale of woe, he ran 
out into the desert and was seen no more. An- 
other ending of the story is that the monk reached 
the next village, where he leaped into the open 
furnace connected with the public baths, and so 
perished. It was the old story, "The woman 
whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of 
the tree, and I did eat." The anchorites, erem- 
ites, recluses and hermits of the ages of credulity 
lived an unnatural life of repression, and woman, 
that should have provided the sweetest compan- 
ionship, furnished temptation only. The re- 
pression revenged itself upon these unclean as- 
pirants for a spurious holiness. There is in 
Lecky's "History of European Morals" an elo- 
quent and familiar passage that should not be 
passed over in treating of this subject: 



64 LOVE AND LETTERS 

"With such men, living such a life, visions and 
miracles were necessarily habitual. All the ele- 
ments of hallucination were there. Ignorant and 
superstitious, believing as a matter of religious con- 
viction that countless demons filled the air, at- 
tributing every fluctuation of his own temperament 
and every exceptional phenomenon in surrounding 
nature to spiritual agency; delirious too, from soli- 
tude and long-continued austerities, the hermit soon 
mistook for palpable realities the phantoms of his 
brain. In the ghastly gloom of the sepulchre, 
where, amid mouldering corpses, he took up his 
abode; in the long hours of the night of penance, 
when the desert wind sobbed around his lonely cell, 
and the cries of wild beasts were borne upon his 
ear, — visible forms of lust or terror appeared to 
haunt him, and strange dramas were enacted by 
those who were contending for his soul. An 
imagination strained to the utmost limit, acting upon 
a frame attenuated and diseased by macerations, 
produced bewildering psychological phenomena, 
paroxysms of conflicting passions, sudden alterna- 
tions of joy and anguish, which he regarded as 
manifestly supernatural. Sometimes, in the very 
ecstasy of his devotion, the memory of old scenes 
would crowd upon his mind. The shady groves 
and soft voluptuous gardens of his native city would 
arise, and, kneeling alone upon the burning sand, 
he seemed to see around him the fair groups of 
dancing-girls, on whose warm, undulating limbs and 
wanton smiles his youthful eyes had too fondly 
dwelt. Sometimes his temptation sprang from re- 
membered sounds. The sweet licentious songs of 
other days came floating on his ears, and his heart 
was thrilled with the passions of the past." 



LOVE AND LETTERS 65 

The life these men lived confused in their minds 
all distinction between purity and impurity. 
Shakspeare knew well the difference: 

"Love comforteth like sunshine after rain. 
But lust's effect is tempest after sun; 
Love's gentle spring doth always fresh remain; 
Lust's winter comes ere summer half be done; 
Love surfeits not, lust like a glutton dies; 
Love is all truth, lust full of forged lies !" 

Venus and Adonis. 

Alp and Andes, the Rocky Mountains of North 
America and the Mountains of the Moon that are 
not in the moon at all, but in the tropical forests 
of Africa, from which they extend to the arid 
wastes of the Abyssinian Desert, have been pushed 
up from the central fires in the heart of the earth. 
So it is with our human nature. From the brutal 
and ferocious passions of wild animals we have 
come at length to the white snow-fields of a pure 
love that, seeing God, sees also what is Godlike 
in man, who is described as "the image of God." 
The most exalted love of which we are capable 
is rooted in something we do not like to contem- 
plate. But is the pure heart less pure or less 
worthy of regard because of its mean beginning ? 
It was Professor Huxley who said that speech 
was only so much transmuted mutton. Are then 
the songs of all the great singers who have 
charmed the world nothing but a httle muscular 
tissue.? Are all our virtues only transfigured 
vices? Does the law of the correlation of forces 



66 LOVE AND LETTERS 

apply as well to things spiritual? There have 
been those who maintained that the devout prayer 
of a gentle mother might be expressed in chemical 
terms were our instruments and processes suffi- 
ciently fine; but it is hard to believe that the 
beautiful poems, great paintings, and imperish- 
able books are merely transmuted physical force 
and nothing more. It is true that under all the 
glory of the spiritual there is a coarse material, 
but the two are not the same. Love unites the 
pure in heart, and to them there comes the won- 
derful vision of God that had its rise, no doubt, 
through long ages of development, from those 
animal fires that underlie the entire world of 
living creatures; but snow-fields and central fires 
are not one and the same thing. A great change 
has come through the line of development, and 
the beast has in large measure retired; the man 
stands forth, the majestic creature he not only 
is, but is yet to become. There is something 
more than the correlation of forces in the making 
of Homer, Euclid, Dante, Luther, and Michael 
Angelo. The persistence, transmutability, and 
indestructibility of force will not fully explain 
these. Above the brutal passion that serves to 
perpetuate race and species, and that is sometimes 
cruel, and always selfish, there rises as the snowy 
mountain above the hot earth from which it 
springs, a love that, if not wholly unselfish, is yet 
noble, pure, and gentle when compared with its 
unattractive starting-place. Between these are 
many grades ranging all the way from animal 



LOVE AND LETTERS 67 

appetite to manly devotion and womanly affec- 
tion. And above these again tower other heights 
that few tread, but that show to all how great are 
the possibilities of our human nature. There are 
angelic loves and loves celestial that lead up to 
a love no child of earth can ever fully under- 
stand, because it is Divine. "The glory of the 
celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial 
is another." There is a love that remakes the 
man, changing him into *'the same image from 
glory unto glory, even as by the Spirit of the 
Lord," until all the old is consumed and "the face 
shines as the sun and the raiment is white as the 
light." Beyond this no man may go, for the 
solitary heights, though they look down in bless- 
ing, invite not our human approach. 

The dying Bunsen, looking into the eyes of 
his wife, who was bending over him, said, "In thy 
face I have seen the Eternal !" There are natures 
so rare and pure that they scarcely cloud the 
heavenly love that transfigures them. Through 
characters thus transparent we behold God. The 
dying Bunsen was not alone. Dr. Abbot inscribed 
this same vision of the heart upon the stone that 
marked his wife's grave. Mrs. Browning knew 
it well, and who has better described it than she 
in these lines from "Aurora Leigh" : 

"In that great square of the Santissima, 
There drifted past him (scarcely marked enough 
To move his comfortable island-scorn), 
A train of priestly banners, cross and psalm. 



68 LOVE AND LETTERS 

The white-veiled, rose-crowned maidens holding 

up 
Tall tapers, weighty for such mists, aslant 
To the blue luminous tremor of the air. 
And letting drop the white wax as they went 
To eat the bishop's wafer at the church; 
From which long trail of chanting priests and 

girls 
A face flashed like a cymbal on his face. 
And shook with silent clangor brain and heart. 
Transfiguring him to music. Thus, even thus 
He too received his sacramental gift 
With eucharistic meanings; for he loved." 

The supreme love of husband and wife, per- 
fectly mated or nearly so, is in the nature of 
things religious ; there is within it a spiritual ele- 
ment. The wafer of Divine Communion is not 
far removed from the "sacramental gift" of love. 
To this great truth other gifted ones beside Bun- 
sen bear witness. Edwards saw it as a vision of 
transcendent spiritual beauty in the face of Sarah 
Pierrepont. The Girondist Roland, surrounded 
by the fierce political convulsions of his age, be- 
held it in the gaze of Jeanne Philipon. Every- 
where and always the same spiritual yet passionate 
love clothes itself in the same spiritual beauty. 

Parkman describes certain Indians who go 
through the form of marriage with their fish-nets. 
An Oriental writer describes the marriage of a 
Chinese lady to a beautiful vase covered with red 
flowers. The vase was a substitute for the son 
of a wealthy mandarin to whom she had been 



LOVE AND LETTERS 69 

engaged, and who died just before the contem- 
plated marriage. She had vowed that she would 
never wed another man ; and so, to keep her vow, 
she determined to "put herself out of the market" 
by marrying a piece of pottery. It is a custom 
with the Khatris, when a man has lost his second 
wife, to marry an Ak plant, so that when he takes 
another woman for his wife she may not die. 
These marriages are only methods of evading real 
marriage, for though some of the persons thus 
married do marry again, the most of them do not, 
and all of them are excused, if they so wish, from 
any future alliance. Even the man who marries 
the Ak plant that a third wife may not die, not 
infrequently neglects to find for himself the third 
wife. 

It may be love between the sexes, especially in 
early life, has come to have in some measure a 
pathological cast because of the peculiar phe- 
nomena which it exhibits — its effect upon appe- 
tite, sleep, and occupation, as well as upon the 
voice and the senses. There is a somewhat hu- 
morous account of a young scion of nobility in 
the England of other days whose various pas- 
sions so amused his tutor that that gentleman 
made, according to current tradition, a somewhat 
facetious report of them in their influence upon 
the young man's health, to the mother. The 
young nobleman was the Duke of Hamilton, and 
his tutor was a certain Dr. Moore, of whom we 
should never have known anything but for the 
loves of this most susceptible young Duke. The 



70 LOVE AND LETTERS 

Duke was eighteen and had just fallen a victim 
to a pair of black eyes that unfortunately be- 
longed to a married lady. Dr. Moore made this 
most interesting report to the young man's 
mother : 

"This is the third passion the duke has had since 
we crossed the sea. His various passions generally 
affect his appetite^ and I can make a pretty good 
guess at the height of his love by the victuals he 
refuses to eat. A slight touch of love puts him 
immediately from legumes and all kinds of jardi- 
nage. If it rises a degree higher he turns up his 
nose at fricassees and ragouts. Another degree 
and he will rather go to bed supperless than taste 
plain roasted veal or poulets of any sort. This is 
the utmost length to which his passion has ever 
come hitherto, for when he was at the court with 
Mile. Marchenville, though she put him entirely 
from greens, ragouts and veal, yet she made no im- 
pression on his roast beef or mutton appetite. He 
fed plentifully upon these in spite of her charms. 
I intend to make a thermometer for the duke's pas- 
sion with four degrees — (1) greens, (2) fricassees 
and ragouts, (3) roast veal and fowls, (4) plain 
roast mutton or beef — and if ever the mercury 
mounts as high as the last I shall think the case 
alarming." 

Mr. Roosevelt and certain other ill-informed 
agitators have protested in season and out of 
season against an imaginary catastrophe which 
has received the name of "race suicide." It is 
represented that the intentional sterility of mod- 



LOVE AND LETTERS 71 

em marriage endangers the continuance, at least 
in some parts of our world, of the human race. 
This protest against the circumscribing of the 
domestic circle is seconded by military authorities 
because they find it difficult where the family is 
small to obtain a sufficient number of young men 
for the army and for the navy. The census re- 
turns for 1900 show the population of France to 
be about 38,600,000, which is an increase of only 
330,000 over 1896. To this small increase Paris 
and its suburbs gives 290,000, the greater part 
of which number is due to foreign immigrants, 
so that the rest of France gives an increase of 
only 40,000. This result when compared with 
the returns from England, Austria, Italy, and 
especially Germany, furnishes some cause for anx- 
iety. 

There is, however, another side to the so-called 
"race suicide" question. Mothers do not wish 
to feed the military glory of France, nor do they 
desire to feed that of any other nation with their 
own sons. The needs of the army and of the 
navy do not appeal to them under the circum- 
stances named. The very fact that boys are 
wanted for such uses seems to them to furnish 
an excellent reason why boys should be hard to 
obtain. The old cry of patriotism with which 
the authorities were wont to fool the unwary has 
lost much of its power. Large families are not 
so desirable as are good ones ; and good families 
are not so likely to be large. Woman's function 
is not simply to bear children, but also to rear 



7a LOVE AND LETTERS 

them; and that not as food for powder, but as 
the supporters of society and good government. 
I doubt if the world would be in any wise injured 
were no children to be born during the next 
three years. The earth is well populated in all 
those portions where life is possible without great 
hardship. The increased cost of living has a de^ 
cided tendency to restrict the size and open-hand- 
edness of the family. Comparatively few men 
can afford to marry in early life unless the bride 
brings a generous bestowment in money, and so 
it has come to pass that the dowry is an actual 
necessity. This necessity, of course, increases 
with the increasing size of the family. 

This unnatural state of things introduces no 
small amount of wrong thinking and feeling. 
The sacredness of the family is in a measure de- 
stroyed. Children are not welcomed where they 
should be anticipated with maternal affection. In 
France matrimonial sterilization is not unpopu- 
lar. Zola tells his readers, in "Fecondite," that 
there are twenty thousand women in France who 
for purposes of their own have submitted to be 
unsexed. Statements to the same effect are made 
by Leon Daudet in "Les Morticoles," and by 
CamiUe Pert in "Les Floriferes.'* These figures 
may be exaggerated, but the number is beyond 
all question large. The operation is held in fa- 
vor not only because some women wish to escape 
the peril and burden of motherhood, but because 
in many cases the money is not sufficient for the 
requirements of a large family. A question arises 



LOVE AND LETTERS 73 

in this connection as to the right of parents to 
bring children into the world where there can be 
little or no hope of providing for them. 

Havelock Ellis, in his "Sex in Relation to So- 
ciety," calls attention to the resemblance between 
some of the hetairoe and many of the leaders in 
the "Woman's Rights Movement" of the present 
time. These women of ancient Greece would have 
been fascinating and wonderful in any country 
or age. We have come to regard the word 
hetaircE as the equivalent of "prostitute," because 
the relation which the more cultivated hetavroe 
sustained to the brilhant men of art, letters, and 
jurisprudence was in part sexual. The word 
hetaira means "friend" or "companion," and had 
in it at first nothing of a dishonorable nature. 
These women were in a sense the radical reformers 
of their day. Most of the women of Greece, and 
of all other countries at that time, were ignorant 
and held under great social restraint; but these 
women refused to be social puppets; they de- 
manded place and influence. The only way at 
that time to obtain what they earnestly coveted 
and resolutely demanded was the one way, with 
all its unfortunate features, which they boldly 
took and ably pursued. Aspasia was a worthy 
representative of her class, both in the refinement 
and elevation of her mind and in the charm of 
her person. She was interested in whatever looked 
to the emancipation of her sex, and she used 
her wonderful influence with her distinguished 
"friends" in that direction. Leaena was a woman 



74o LOVE AND LETTERS 

of the same class. Her name has been preserved 
because of her great service nobly rendered to her 
fellow-conspirators. She bit off her tongue so 
that no torture could make her reveal the names 
of those who were associated with her in a common 
plot. Thargelia accompanied Xerxes when he in- 
vaded Greece. Her talents and training were 
such that he engaged her to negotiate with the 
Court of Thessaly, and she with no difficulty cap- 
tivated the king of that country, and married 
him. One of these brilliant women established at 
Athens a house that we in these days tolerate 
with averted face. But there was this remark- 
able difference between her establishment and the 
baser ones of our modem cities — she gave pub- 
licly lectures to her girls, and to their visitors 
as well. In these lectures she treated of rhetoric 
and philosophy, and her ability was such that 
Socrates, Alcibiades, Pericles and other distin- 
guished men listened to her with delight, and often 
discussed with her questions of great importance 
to the State. It may be that she incited the war 
against Samos, and certainly she was a potent 
factor in the conflict with Megara. At last her 
power became so great that the virtuous women 
of Athens accused her before the Areopagus, and 
it was with difficulty that her life was saved ; but it 
was saved, and the lectures continued. Hip- 
parchia's career was equally remarkable. She 
was the Cynic philosopher's mistress, and suc- 
ceeded Crates as a professor of the Cynic philos- 
ophy. 



LOVE AND LETTERS 76 

Baechis, the dear friend of Hyperides, was pre- 
sented, in token of her learning, with a costly 
necklace which was coveted by well nigh all the 
women of Athens. The one fragment of Hy- 
perides which has survived the ravages of time is 
that eloquent man's oration over the remains of 
Baechis. Greater than all these was Lais, the 
beautiful Sicilian. She was a slave when Apelles 
saw her carrying water which she had drawn from 
a well. He was captivated by her beauty, and 
bought her at once. He gave her an education, 
and day by day she advanced in learning until 
she was acknowledged to be the most brilliant 
woman in all the learned society of Greece. Then 
he freed her, and established her at Corinth with 
"a circle of lovely girls" of whom she was in 
charge. Hers was a house of prostitution, but 
it had a regular school where the arts and de- 
bauchery were both taught. To it came attract- 
ive pupils from Lesbos, Phoenicia, and the Islands 
of the JEgean. Lais rose to great fame and 
fortune. She spent her money freely in adorn- 
ing the city, and the citizens wished to possess 
her statue. The sculptor Myron was given a 
commission to model "the woman of all women 
the most beautiful" ; but when the artist came to 
study her charms he was himself so dazzled by 
them that, though he was old and infirm, he threw 
himself and all his earthly possessions at her feet. 
She spumed him and his gold. In no wise 
daunted, he repaired to a celebrated perfumer 
who dyed his hair and beard, and rejuvenated his 



76 LOVE AND LETTERS 

dilapidated person. Thus tricked out, he re- 
newed his suit only to be again repulsed. She 
called him an old fool, and such beyond all ques- 
tion he certainly was. But with all her haughty 
magnificence, Lais had no power to prevent Time 
from despoiling her of her beauty. The merci- 
less years wrinkled her brow and frosted her hair, 
and there was no perfumer who could do more for 
her than an other and more seasonable one had 
done for her once spumed would-be lover. Her 
money faded away with her charms, and all we 
know of her old age is learned from Epicrates, 
who represents her as a drunken hag wandering 
about the Corinth that once desired to plant her 
statue in its public square, seeking to sell for a 
pittance what once vast sums were wont to pur- 
chase. Perhaps in those bitter days she remem- 
bered how once in the height of her splendor 
Xenocrates won his wager and successfully re- 
sisted her though she displayed her every charm. 
From his side she rose with the cry, "I wagered 
to rouse a man, not a statue !" Plato derided 
her ruined beauty when she was old with these 
cruel lines : 

"Once at Greece proud Lais mocked, — 

With gay lovers laughed all day; 
Now these lovers come no more. 

Mirth and song are passed away. 
Venus, take this glass from me, 

Since I old and wrinkled grow; 
What I am I would not see, 

What I shall be would not know." ^ 

^Marvin: "Flowers of Song from Many Lands," p. 85. 



LOVE AND LETTERS 77 

Phryne was wiser in her day and generation, 
for she was less prodigal of her beauty. Thus it 
was she preserved to the last both her fortune and 
her fame. Her wealth, all of it won by evil 
ways, was fabulous ; so great was it that when 
Alexander destroyed Thebes, she offered to re- 
build the city if the citizens would commemorate 
her generosity. She did not ask a statue; all 
she demanded was an inscription. This the citi- 
zens of Thebes refused, though the fair courtesan 
had numbered among her lovers the most gifted 
men of her day. Hyperides the orator, Apelles 
the painter, and Praxiteles the sculptor were 
among her acknowledged lovers. It was to her 
Praxiteles gave the crowning work of his genius 
— ^his Cupid. Both he and Apelles reproduced 
in all the glory of their faultless art the naked 
beauty of Phryne. Story, himself a sculptor of 
rare grace and charm, knew by an artistic in- 
stinct what was the sweet delight Praxiteles felt 
when he turned to Phryne, who stood by his side, 
and said, "See! It is done; and forever your 
lovely face and form, my Phryne, shall live in 
marble for all the ages to view." Story has 
shaped the scene in verse : 

"A thousand silent years ago. 
The twilight, faint and pale. 
Was drawing o'er the sunset-glow 
Its soft and shadowy veil, 

When from his work the sculptor stayed 
His hand, and, turned to one 



78 LOVE AND LETTERS 

Who stood beside him, half in shade. 
Said, with a sigh, * 'Tis done. 

'Thus much is saved from chance and change. 

That waits for me and thee; 
Thus much — how little! — from the range 

Of Death and Destiny. 

'Phryne, thy human lips shall pale. 

Thy rounded limbs decay, — 
Nor love nor prayers can aught avail 

To bid thy beauty stay: 

'But there thy smile, for centuries. 

On marble lips shall live, — 
For art can grant what love denies. 
And fix the fugitive. 

'Sad thought! nor age nor death shall fade 

The youth of this cold bust, 
When the quick brain and hand that made. 

And thou and I are dust! 

'When all our hopes and fears are dead. 

And both our hearts are cold. 
And love is like a tune that's played. 

And life a tale that's told, 

'This senseless stone, so coldly fair. 

That love nor life can warm. 
The same enchanting look shall wear, 
The same enchanting form. 

'Its peace no sorrow shall destroy; 
Its beauty age shall spare; 



LOVE AND LETTERS 79 

The bitterness of vanished joy, 
The wearing waste of care. 

'And there, upon that silent face. 

Shall unborn ages see 
Perennial youth, perennial grace. 

And sealed serenity; 

'And strangers, when we sleep in peace. 

Shall say, not quite unmoved, — 
"So smiled upon Praxiteles 

The Phryne whom he loved." 

Praxiteles flourished about 352-336 B. C, in 
the age of Philip and Demosthenes. His techni- 
cal skill was something wonderful : "The limbs of 
his figures were so soft that you seemed to 
see the pulse of life and the quivering muscle." 
Not before his time did Aphrodite put off her 
drapery, but when he appeared she showed her- 
self naked. Two old Greek lines which I have, 
in my "Flowers of Song," rendered into English 
run thus : 

"Paris has seen me naked, Anchises and Adonis too. 
But when did the great Praxiteles my undraped 
beauty view?" 

Why should she enquire.? Was her surprise, 
then, so great? The Princess Borghese, who 
was no saint, sat to Canova for a model, and 
being asked if she did not feel a little uncom- 
fortable, answered, "No, there was a fire in the 
room." Perhaps Aphrodite was trifling even 



80 LOVE AND LETTERS 

as was the beautiful sister of Bonaparte. What 
Paris may have known, or what may have been 
the relation of the goddess to Anchises or 
Adonis, concerns us little; but Praxiteles knew 
her, at least in marble, too well for us to share 
her feigned surprise. 

Notwithstanding the decadent condition of 
Greek life there were those who regarded the 
undraped form as harmful, and who with Gyges 
(Herodotus I, 8) held that "with her clothes a 
woman puts off her modesty." The early 
chaster idea passed gradually to the freer until 
the painter Polygnotus first painted women with 
transparent garments. It was not difficult then 
for Phidias to place the lad Pantarkes tying his 
head with a fillet (Pausanius 5, II) near his 
Homeric Zeus, even though it was well known 
that the lad was a boy-favorite of Phidias, for 
the sexual violation of boys came to be an every- 
day affair with the Greeks. 

Who was Phryne? She was a poor girl of 
Thespiae who, because of her great beauty, had 
become enormously rich at the expense of the 
finest culture of the land and the age. At 
Delphi her statue was placed by the side of that 
of King Philip of Macedon. A philosopher, 
seeing it there, exclaimed, "Behold a consecrated 
gift of the wantonness of the Greeks." Over- 
beck views the matter in a different light, for 
he tells us that "Praxiteles understood very well 
how to express a more delicate perception : the 



LOVE AND LETTERS 81 

goddess in the woman." ^ By that I under- 
stand an ability to spiritualize the material form, 
which does not seem to me so wonderful. Every 
lover does as much in his mind if he be a pure 
man. Every noble love transforms and adorns. 
It gives both insight to the artist and a new 
beauty to what he would adorn. The Greeks 
worshipped material beauty; and the gods also, 
it would seem, were wild over this same kind of 
human splendor, for they snatched Ganymede, 
who was the fairest of mortals, and on that 
Trojan youth poured out all the joy of their 
glorious life. It was beauty, and that alone, 
that made one fit to dwell with the gods. The 
Greeks were, however, all wrong in their theory 
of the nude in art. It is the adorned and partly 
concealed, and not the entirely undraped form, 
that acts as an excitant to the sexual instinct. 
Artists' models know this, and account themselves 
safe when entirely nude. The authoress of 
"Studies of the Human Form" tells her readers 
that it was her practice to disrobe as soon after 
entering the artist's studio as possible. The evil- 
minded men and women who in large cities con- 
duct vile exhibitions for money understand this 
matter. The Cyprians of Paris and New York 
are in long skirts. 

An early commentator on Genesis makes the 
Fall of Man to be a sexual catastrophe. Adam, 

i"Geschichte der Griechischen Plastik," 1870, Vol. 2, p. 
35. 



82 LOVE AND LETTERS 

we are informed, represented the mind, and Eve 
stood fdr the sensual nature. It was contended 
that before the creation of Eve, the first man 
Adam contained in his person both sexes. It 
was the coming of Eve that introduced sin. The 
life of Adam was purely intellectual until Eve 
was created; he was occupied with knowledge to 
the entire neglect of his body. With his death 
the race must disappear. Therefore, in order 
to provide for the continuance of the human race, 
God made also the woman. God divided the 
two sexes in the man, taking from his rib the 
sexual part of his nature, and forming from it 
Eve. Then it was the two sexes became con- 
scious, and, the one knowing of the other's 
presence, they both realized that they were 
naked. Only when the race became aware of its 
sexual function and destiny could it arrive at 
any feeling of its need for covering. Later that 
feeling of nakedness and of need for covering 
was overcome and put away by the bodily nature 
represented in Eve; but the intellectual nature 
which finds its representative in Adam has always 
contended for the reserve and propriety of gar- 
ments. As the intellect must rule the passions, 
so must the man command the woman. Thus 
some of the old-time commentators expounded 
the problem of sex. There are a number of 
Oriental couplets of more than ordinary interest 
that set forth the beginning of sex, and, because 
these are peculiarly apropos, I venture to add 



LOVE AND LETTERS 83 

yet this one translation from my "Flowers of 
Song from Many Lands." 

"From dead and senseless earth Almighty God 
created man: 
But woman made He from man's body by diviner 
plan. 

And thus on earth began the wondrous miracle of 

sex, 
The human heart to fill with joy, the empty head 

to vex. 

Man was the first in dim creation's dark and an- 
cient line; 

But woman is the softer, sweeter, clearer, more 
divine. 

The Lord from inorganic earth made man for toil 

and strife. 
And moulded then from living clay young Adam's 

lovely wife." 

Of course any excursion into Oriental regions 
must lead us far from the present field of in- 
vestigation. The study of Latin and Greek 
contributions to the subject in hand covers all 
the ground necessary. The sexual perversity 
and as well the moral triumphs of those great 
lands from which we derive so much of our 
language, and so much also of all that is su- 
premely good in literature, must suffice. There 
is but little that concerns us that may not be 
studied to advantage in the history and literature 



84 LOVE AND LETTERS 

of the lands of Virgil and Homer. The belief 
entertained by some that those mines of wisdom 
are now well nigh exhausted is a mistaken one, 
for they are still rich in all that pleases imagina- 
tion and delights the mature judgment. 

John Nevizan recounted in his "Nuptial 
Grove" thirty-four essentials to womanly beauty ; 
and without these, so he tells us, no woman may 
be called perfect. All these our author declares 
were the possession of Helen. Her beauty 
caused other women to hate her, which will not 
seem strange when one considers how anxious 
are women to excel in beauty of person and 
charm of manner. Of her lovers we need say 
little. Their names and exploits are known to 
all, and are the themes of song and story. The 
poets understood her character, and never hesi- 
tated in describing her. The land of Sandalion 
got its name from Helen's sandal, which she 
lost in that place when she fled from Paris, who 
would have forced her. Her "willing mind," 
of which Ovid sings, does not seem to have in- 
jured her in the eyes of the men and women of 
her day.^ They made her a goddess, and raised 
to her fame and glory a temple, beneath which 
(so Pausanius tells us) both Menelaus and Helen 
were buried. This does not, however, comport 

1 "One Theseus (if I hit the name) before 

Had borne this fair one from her native shore. 
Theseus was young: and can you think the dame 
Return'd a virgin from so fierce a flame? 
Call it a rape; yet Helen sure was kind: 
Repeated rapes betray a willing mind." 



LOVE ANC LETTERS 85 

with the story that she was hanged by the paid 
servants of a woman whose husband had been slain 
in the Trojan war. After she had become divine 
many fables about her were invented. It was 
represented that Nemesis, being impregnated by 
Jupiter, laid an egg, and that Leda, finding this 
egg, sat on it and hatched Castor, Pollux, and 
Helen. A rival fable represents Nemesis to have 
laid an egg; Mercury took the egg, carried it 
to Lacedsemon, and placed it in Leda's bosom. 
Thus came the fair Helen; and this was the 
reason that Leda adopted her as her daughter. 

Helen is made to say in Euripides that Juno, 
to punish Paris for not giving her the victory in 
the contest of beauty between Helen and herself, 
deprived him of Helen. But she was, after all, 
not so cruel as to leave him wholly without con- 
solation, for she gave him a living image of 
Helen which was formed of the air, and 
which could in every way dissemble and imitate 
the beautiful daughter of Tyndarus. 

"Juno enrag'd at loss of beauty's prize, 
Robb'd Priam's son of me, his promis'd bride. 
And in my stead gave him an airy phantom. 
Bearing my semblance. And this the cheated boy 
Press'd to his breast, thinking he me enjoy'd. 
Vain thought!" 

Paris can hardly be said to have been pun- 
ished, for he was well pleased with the phantom, 
and found it impossible to distinguish it from 
the true Helen. But the Trojans, not knowing 



86 LOVE AND LETTERS 

the one Helen from the other, were sometimes 
pleased with the woman and sometimes with the 
image, and so after angry words they came to 
blows. 

I am in no wise surprised at the exploits of 
Paris, but I have always been amazed at the in- 
fatuation of Demosthenes. That most illus- 
trious orator fell desperately in love with the 
beautiful but disreputable Lais, and so great was 
the passionate folly of the man that he made 
a journey to Corinth upon an errand of his 
own in no wise creditable to his learning and to 
his gray hairs. Aristippus, who is described as 
"a very genteel and polite man," and who was 
certainly a man of great wit and elegant man- 
ners, counted himself also among her lovers. 
He was not, however, sentimental, for when he 
was told that the courtesan did not love him, 
he said, "Wine and fish do not love me, and yet 
I feed on them with pleasure." But Lais, with 
all her beauty and accomplishments, was in no 
wise what would be called "squeamish," for 
among her followers was Diogenes surnamed the 
Cynic. The extreme indecency of this man may 
be doubted, but he was not the kind of a person 
whose society one of delicate tastes could long 
enjoy. I do not know whether it is true or 
only a very good story that he lived in a tub, 
but for the brief time he lived with Lais he was 
most decidedly in need of a bath. He is repre- 
sented as having a torn or patched cloak, a 
greasy beard, and no shirt. 



LOVE AND LETTERS 87 

That the Emperor Caligula entertained his 
horse at supper, and introduced the animal to 
the most distinguished men of the day as his 
friend and guest, seems to us a strange and mon- 
strous thing; but it certainly was not so aston- 
ishing as was the apotheosis of the prostitute 
Lamia, the depth of whose infamy is indicated 
by her name. A king lifted her from the 
street, and placed her beside him upon the 
throne. To provide a present for his mistress 
he taxed Athens a sum equal to $250,000 in 
our money ; and the citizens not only paid it, 
but builded for her a temple when she had been 
deified as Venus Lamia. Think of this, and 
then let the mind contemplate the pure love of 
Darius, the last king of the Persians, for his 
wife. Call to mind his prayer to the gods for 
the success of Alexander, who was his enemy, 
because Alexander did not slay that wife when 
she was in his power, but treated her with the 
utmost courtesy. 

Reflect upon Tiberius Gracchus and his wife 
Cornelia. She, when a widow, refused a king be- 
cause the ashes of her husband pressed too 
heavily upon her heart. Let the mind dwell upon 
Dominicus Catalusius, Prince of Lesbos, and his 
leprous wife. Though disease had deformed 
her face and made her presence repulsive to 
others, he still encircled her with the tenderest 
love of a husband. Nor would he be deterred 
from her society by any fear of contagion. 
Consider the heroic love of Arria, the wife of 



88 LOVE AND LETTERS 

Caecina Paetus, celebrated in Martial's Epi- 
gram. When her husband was condemned to 
die by his own hand, seeing that he hesitated, 
she seized the dagger and plunged it into her 
own breast. Then, withdrawing it, she pre- 
sented it to her husband, saying with a smile, 
"It is not painful, Pfetus." 

"When to her husband Arria gave the steel, 

Which from her chaste, her bleeding breast she 
drew. 
She said: 'My Paetus, this I do not feel, 

But, oh! the wound that must be given by 
you!'" 

"How sweet to the soul of man," said Hiero- 
cles, "is the society of a beloved wife ! When 
wearied and broken down by the labors of the 
day, her endearments soothe, her tender cares 
restore him. The solicitudes and anxieties and 
heavier misfortunes of life are hardly to be 
borne by him who has the weight of business 
and domestic vexations at the same time to con- 
tend with. But how much lighter do they seem, 
when, after his necessary vocations are over, he 
returns to his home and finds there a partner 
of all his griefs and troubles, who takes, for his 
sake, her share of domestic labor upon her, 
and soothes the anguish of his soul by her com- 
fort and participation." When one comes 
upon words like these from the dim and lonely 
past, how can he doubt that in ancient Greece 
and Rome the same tender love made domestic 



LOVE AND LETTERS 89 

life pure and beautiful, even as we find it to 
be to-day in Christian England and America? 
Euripides shows us in his "Alcestis" that long 
ago as now there was that in a pure and true 
love between the sexes that could sanctify the 
little cares of life, and that could help men to 
bear with fortitude the more distressing ills of 
human existence. The story of Pastus and 
Arria is only another part of the same noble and 
touching revelation. 

There is a Supreme Affection that is not only 
pure, but that creates purity by its very pres- 
ence. With contempt it gazes, when gaze it 
must, upon the evil infamy of lust and brutal 
appetite. It is an Affection worthy alone to be 
called Love. Resplendent with the golden light 
of the City not builded with hands, it wears 
upon its brow the ineffable smile of its Creator. 

We are now come to the end of our journey, 
and must bid adieu alike to the bright and beauti- 
ful spirits that have made the way delightful, and 
to those dark presences whose records are painful 
to contemplate. Their names are in history, 
but where are they themselves? They are gone 
from a world that can never forget them. Long, 
long ago Villon mused as we are now musing, 
and in his lovely "Ballade of Dead Ladies" he 
asked the same question that we have asked. 
We can make no better conclusion to our ex- 
cursion than the one we have already at hand in 
Rossetti's translation of Villon's "Ballade" ; 



90 LOVE AND LETTERS 

"Tell me now in what hidden way is 
Lady Flora the lovely Roman? 
Where's Hipparchia^ and where is Thais, 
Neither of them the fairer woman? 
Where is Echo, beheld of no man. 
Only heard on river and mere, — 

She whose beauty was more than hu- 
man? 
But where are the snows of yester-year? 

Where's Heloise, the learned nun. 
For whose sake Abeillard, I ween. 

Lost manhood and put priesthood on? 
(From love he won such dule and teen!) 
And where, I pray you, is the Queen 

Who willed that Buridan should steer 

Sewed in a sack's mouth down the Seine? 

But where are the snows of yester-year? 

White Queen Blanche, like a queen of lilies. 
With a voice like any mermaiden, — 

Bertha Broadfoot, Beatrice, Alice, 

And Ermengarde the lady of Maine, — 
And that good Joan whom Englishmen 

At Rouen doomed and burned her there, — 
Mother of God, where are they then ? 

But where are the snows of yester-year? 

Nay, never ask this week, fair lord. 

Where they are gone, nor yet this year. 

Save with thus much for an overword, — 
But where are the snows of yester-year?" 



II 

THE GOOD NEIGHBOR 

"The Master said, 'It is virtuous manners which 
constitute the excellence of a neighborhood.' " 

— Confucius. 

"Fellow Citizens: I presume you all know who 
I am. I am humble Abraham Lincoln." 

— From an Address by Lincoln. 



THE GOOD NEIGHBOR 

I ONCE knew, long years ago, a man of large 
wealth who lived in a modest house in a quiet 
little village. His home contained rare books 
and delightful pictures, but these he did not 
idolize, nor did he make any selfish use of them. 
He was not what is commonly called a book- 
worm, for his chief satisfaction in life was not 
a matter of books but of men. He was loved 
by all, and no man envied his good fortune. 
The poor were drawn to him by many acts of 
courtesy and kindness. Young men assembled 
in his library to converse with him about litera- 
ture, art, and the humanities. They felt the 
enthusiasm of his spirit, and were in a measure 
transformed by the adoption of his ideals. 
Places of evil-resort disappeared because they 
could not thrive under his disapproval. The 
village fathers, influenced by his public spirit, 
became aware of the neglected condition of the 
streets and of the town hall. Everywhere men 
were set to work digging sewers and relaying 
bricks and stones in long-neglected sidewalks. 
A course of lectures brought distinguished men 
and women to the village. Emerson discoursed 
in the Congregational church, and late into the 
evening conversed with the young people of the 
village beneath our good neighbor's roof, en- 
deavoring to awaken in their minds a generous 
delight in noble things. Two weekly papers, 

gs 



&4 LOVE AND LETTERS 

the one Republican and the other Democratic, 
for years expressed, in not over decorous phrases, 
certain very decided opinions with regard to each 
other, but they both underwent a marvellous 
change of heart, and, though they continued to 
favor different political measures, they revised 
their vocabularies and laid hold of the olive 
branch. There had been a vulgar strife between 
a Presbyterian church and a rival Episcopal 
church situated on the next block. Both were 
agreed in only one thing — a hearty disapproval 
of the Unitarian church which fronted the town 
hall and was exasperatingly prosperous. Under 
the strong and kindly injfluence of the good 
neighbor, the old religious (or irreligious) ani- 
mosity and sectarian bigotry faded out, and the 
three churches united in a public effort to im- 
prove the condition of the poor and to reshingle 
the leaky roof of the village school. A free cir- 
culating library resulted from our friend's per- 
sonal effort and generous subscription. The 
cemetery, a mile north of the village, had been 
neglected. At his suggestion a new fence was 
builded, the walks were regraveled, and certain 
headstones that had fallen were replaced. An- 
cient inscriptions, well nigh illegible through 
age, were recut, and sunken graves were re- 
mounded. Now a village improvement society, 
of which he was founder and first president, cares 
for the sacred field where "the rude forefathers 
of the hamlet sleep," and the cemetery has be- 



THE GOOD NEIGHBOR 95 

come a beautiful park in which men and women 
delight to walk of a summer evening. 

The life of the good man (he likes best to be 
called "the good neighbor") has been quiet and 
inconspicuous, but it has accomplished much. 
With the large fortune which he inherited he 
might have builded himself a palace in some gay 
and brilliant city; he might have purchased a 
swift and luxurious yacht ; he might have wasted 
time in vulgar indolence or in vicious self-in- 
dulgence at Saratoga or Newport ; he might have 
missed the pure delight and noble service of the 
worthy life he lived. Had he inherited wealth 
when a very young man it is more than likely 
an automobile would have seemed to him a thing 
more to be desired than the love and respect of 
his fellowmen; or that the gratification of 
political ambition would have had for him a 
charm beyond his power to resist. As it was, 
wealth came in early mid-life, after much reading, 
some religious experience, and a few years of 
calm and thoughtful study of social needs and 
possibilities. He asked himself the question, 
"How can I use to the greatest advantage for 
myself and others the little Hfe that for so brief 
a season I may call my own?" He answered the 
question thus, "By so identifying my life with 
that of my race as to live over and over again 
in the ennobled lives of my fellowmen." I am 
reminded of the high and holy ambition of 
George Eliot: 



96 LOVE AND LETTERS 

"Oh^ may I join the choir invisible 
Of those immortal dead who live again 
In minds made better by their presence: live 
In pulses stirred to generosity. 
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn 
For miserable aims that end with self. 
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like 

stars. 
And with their mild persistence urge man's search 
To vaster issues — so to live is heaven: 
To make undying music in the world. 
Breathing as beauteous order, that controls 
With growing sway the growing life of man." 

Human life is brief, and before its days are 
actually numbered its vigor and zest are ex- 
hausted. Yet its possibilities are immense. The 
great achievements of history are rooted in 
single lives. The unselfish life alone endures. 

There dwelt years ago in Amesbury, Massa- 
chusetts, another man who was celebrated as a 
good neighbor. His name was Henry Taylor, 
and he was a friend of the poet Whittier. The 
best account we have of Taylor's life was written 
by Whittier for a village paper. Unlike the 
other neighbor of whom I have written, Henry 
Taylor had little money, though he had enough 
to keep him from want. He was not a man of 
affairs. On the contrary, he was a mystic and 
dreamer who led the quiet and simple life of an 
unlettered workingman. He was no scholar, nor 
yet was he a great reader. Mr. Whittier thinks 
Taylor's entire library did not contain more than 



THE GOOD NEIGHBOR &7 

eight or ten books, among which were a volume 
of Emerson's Essays, Alger's "Poetry of the 
Orient," and a copy of the New Testament. 
Whittier loaned him a copy of Plato which he 
read with pleasure but did not care to retain. 
The New Testament was his constant companion. 
The words of Jesus were always with him, but 
his understanding of them was different from 
that of the surrounding Christian world. His 
religion was one of absolute quietude; Whit- 
tier describes it as "a religion of ineffable 
calm blown over by no winds of hope or fear." 
He had no anxiety about either the present or the 
future. To him the material universe was an 
unreal but beautiful pageant. He believed that 
he had already attained unto "the rest that re- 
maineth for the people of God," and which he 
identified with the Oriental Nirvana. Yet Henry 
Taylor was in every way a good neighbor. He 
was kindness itself. He was wise and far-sighted 
in judgment and advice. He had a passion for 
helping men. The calmness of his life was con- 
tagious. The tones of his voice were reassur- 
ing. Men in desperate straits came to him and 
were dissuaded from suicide; they unburdened 
their consciences in his presence; they even 
sought at his hand absolution; and from his 
quiet home they returned to the world with new 
hope and courage. He was never morose or 
despondent. Trouble, sickness and death could 
not appal him. He seemed to take frightened 
souls into his bosom. It is said that the dying 



98 LOVE AND LETTERS 

lost all fear of death In his presence. His dwell- 
ing became a temple; and to hundreds of his 
fellow men he was something more than a priest. 
Whatever may be thought of his philosophy, 
no one will deny that his life was beautiful. 

There are as many kinds of neighbors as there 
are men and women, and we have room for all. 
God never created two mountains of the same 
height, nor did He ever make two rivers of pre- 
cisely the same length. There is nothing like 
sameness in the thought of God. Uniformity 
is a sort of blasphemy. We should preserve and 
cultivate personal traits and even eccentricities. 
Losing these, we fall back into the common stock 
of nature out of which we were taken. The mat- 
ter-of-fact neighbor was after the Lord's own 
heart, but none the less was Heaven pleased with 
the mystic and dreamer. 

It is not so much by what we do that men 
are helped as by what we are. Words and deeds 
are discounted, but the man himself remains and 
becomes an indisputable fact of which no argu- 
ment can dispose. He gives significance to the 
universe, and from his thinking all things derive 
shape and color. It was not what the mystic 
and dreamer of Amesbury had of earthly goods 
that made him a kind and useful neighbor. He 
had little to give apart from what he was in 
himself. "Do you know, sir, that I am worth 
a million sterling.?" said a great capitalist to 
John Bright. "Yes, sir, and I know that it is 
all you are worth," replied the distinguished 



THE GOOD NEIGHBOR 99 

commoner. The man with his million sterling 
was worth little indeed. "Silver and gold have I 
none," exclaimed an apostle, "but such as I have 
give I thee." yV^hat he had was worth more than 
money. 

Man is at his best in society, and apart from 
some form of society he degenerates, unless, in- 
deed, he be one of those rare specimens of his 
race that, like certain flowers of the desert, 
thrive in solitude. There are men who should 
dwell apart from the world, and who can help 
their fellows only from a distance. Not many 
such are to be found within the narrow space of 
a single generation, but the long history of the 
centuries records the names of a multitude of 
brilliant men and women who were recluses. 
Solitude is not always "the country of the un- 
happy." It has been even the delight of not a 
few. Cowper sighed for "a lodge in some vast 
wilderness." Audubon was happy alone with his 
rifle in the forest. Thoreau was equally happy 
in his log house by Walden water. *'I lose half 
of my soul in losing solitude," wrote Maurice de 
Guerin. Again he wrote, "My God, close my 
eyes ; keep me from the sight of the multitude." 
The brothers of La Trappe find silence and soli- 
tude quite to their minds. "In this world," said 
Schopenhauer, "there is much that is very bad, 
but the worst thing in it is society." Yet not- 
withstanding all this and much more, it is still 
true that it is not good for most men to be 
alone. Comte was not astray when he wrote, 



100 LOVE AND LETTERS 

"He deserved not to be born who thinks he was 
born for himself alone." Even the few men and 
women who were made for solitude still lived, if 
they were of noble nature, not for themselves 
alone, but for others. In most of us the old 
savage reappears when once we cease to touch 
shoulders and keep step. It is ours to render 
society, from which few can be safely removed, 
not only tolerable but attractive and helpful. 
Here comes in the benign office of the good 
neighbor who need not be the intimate friend of 
all, but who must be the agreeable companion 
of some, and a wholesome life-giving presence to 
many. My neighbor is not merely the man or 
woman whose house adjoins mine. Not space 
but social proximity has to do with the making 
of the neighbor. There must be first of all 
human qualities that "shew a heart within blood- 
tinctured, of a veined humanity." Not oneness 
of opinion, but breadth of sympathy is essential. 
No faith, religious or political, can be good for 
a man when once it begins to separate him from 
his race. Religion means, "again I bind." 
We are bound to God only by "the cords of a 
man." "Every man for himself, and the devil 
take the hindermost," means something even 
worse than savage life. Nothing but "universal 
social cohesion" prevents the devil from taking 
every one of us. 

In every small district there is likely to be 
some gentle spirit that finds delight in Nature — 
delight not only for self, but for others as well. 



OLD AGE 197 

we ever so fond of the gentle but cruel sport, 
it is not at all likely we shall have anything re- 
sembling his skill. He made artificial flies the 
year before he died, without spectacles and with- 
out the assistance of others. No doubt Izaak 
Walton attributed the old angler's long life to 
out-door occupations, and especially to angling. 
Walton said, "God never did make a more calm, 
quiet, innocent recreation than angling," but I 
should like to know the opinion of the trout and 
of the other fish that he and Jenkins and men 
of their way of thinking captured. Byron took 
a very different view of the matter when he wrote : 

"And angling, too, that solitary vice, 
Whatever Izaak Walton sings or says; 
The quaint, old, cruel coxcomb, in his gullet 
Should have a hook, and a small trout to pull 
it. 

Age will come to all of us if we live long 
enough to experience its discomforts, but that 
period need not be, and certainly it should not 
be, one of distress if we have health and are lifted 
above the burden of want. Wise were the words 
of Sir Theodore Martin spoken by him in the 
Inaugural Address which he delivered when he 
became rector of St. Andrew's University : 

"It is not years that make age. Frivolous pur- 
suits, base passions unsubdued, narrow selfishness, 
vacuity of mind, life with sordid aims, or no aim 
at all — ^these are the things that bring age upon 
the soul. Healthful tastes, an open eye for what 



198 LOVE AND LETTERS 

is beautiful and good in nature and in man, a happy 
remembrance of youthful pleasures, a mind never 
without some active interest or pursuit — these are 
the things that carry on the feelings of youth even 
into years when the body may have lost most of 
its comeliness and its force." 

Sir Theodore Martin knew whereof he spoke, for 
when he uttered those wise and wholesome words 
he was himself in his ninetieth year. When he 
was a very old man he was still strong of mind 
and body — stronger, beyond aU question, than 
many a younger man who listened to his dis- 
course. 

How about tobacco? Well, there are in our 
world as many opinions with regard to the use 
of "the weed" as there are men to entertain those 
opinions. Where there is so little agreement I 
would not be over-confident, and yet I have an 
opinion the nature of which will be understood 
when I express a willingness to discuss it over a 
fragrant cigar with anyone who does not agree 
with me. Tobacco used with moderation will, I 
think, injure but few, while it is a very great 
comfort to a large number of men. Used with- 
out moderation it is in nearly every case an in- 
jurious agent. I smoke as a general thing three 
cigars a day, one after lunch and two in the 
evening. I have never discovered that my three 
cigars a day have ever hurt me in any way. 

Everyone knows the charming lines written by 
the old English poet George Wisher, who flour- 
ished in the time of James I. Wisher was a 



OLD AGE 199 

kind and friendly man, and withal a man of cour- 
age who espoused the cause of the common people. 
After the Restoration our poet found himself in 
duress for three long years. I wonder much if 
in all that time he had sweet companionship in 
those delicate clouds of tranquillizing smoke he 
celebrated for us all so well in his delightful 
song: 

"Tobacco's but an Indian weed. 
Grows green at morn, cut down at eve; 

It shows our decay. 

We are but clay — 
Think of this when you smoke tobacco. 

The pipe that is so lily-white. 
Wherein, so many take delight. 

Is broke with a touch. 

Men are but such — 
Think of this when you smoke tobacco. 

The pipe that is so foul within 

Shows how man's soul is stained with sin; 

And then, the fire 

It doth require! 
Think of this when you smoke tobacco. 

The ashes that are left behind 
Do serve to keep us all in mind 

That unto dust 

Return we must — 
Think of this when you smoke tobaoco. 



200 LOVE AND LETTERS 

The smoke that doth on high ascend 
Shows how man's life must have au end. 

The vapor's gone, 

Man's life is flown — 
Think of this when you smoke tobacco." 

At a banquet of dealers in tobacco in St. Louis 
some years ago Col. Ingersoll made one of 
the most eloquent of all his eloquent addresses. 
With these words he brought the address to a 
close, and I think they are words that we should 
never allow time to erase from the literature of 
our land: 

"Four centuries ago, Columbus, the adventurous, 
on the blessed island of Cuba, saw happy people 
who rolled leaves between their lips. Above their 
heads were little clouds of smoke. Their faces 
were serene, and in their eyes was the autumnal 
heaven of contentment. These people were kind, 
innocent, gentle and loving. The climate of Cuba 
is the friendship of the earth and the air, and of 
this climate the sacred leaves were born — leaves that 
breed in the mind of him who uses them the cloud- 
less happy days in which they grew. These leaves 
make friends and celebrate with gentle rites the 
vows of peace. They have given consolation to 
the world. They are the friend of the imprisoned, 
of the exile, of workers in mines, of fellers of trees, 
of sailors on the deep sea. They are the givers of 
strength and calm to the vexed and weary minds of 
those who build with thought and rear the temples 
of the soul. They tell of rest and peace. They 
smooth the wrinkled brows of care, drive fear and 
misshapen dread from out the mind and fill the 



OLD AGE 201 

heart with hope and rest. Within their magic warp 
and woof some potent spell imprisoned lies that, 
when released by fire, does softly steal within the 
fortress of the brain and bind in sleep the captured 
sentiments of care and grief. These leaves are the 
friends of the fireside and their smoke-like incense 
rises from myriads of happy homes. Cuba is the 
smile of the sea." 

It is said that Sir Isaac Newton was smoking 
in his garden at Woolsthorpe when the apple 
fell. Dr. Parr was never without his pipe, which 
was half -filled with salt. He even took his pipe 
into drawing-rooms, where he smoked with a 
good-natured and vulgar vanity. Charles Lamb, 
Carlyle, and Tennyson were inveterate smokers. 
General Grant smoked the strongest cigars he 
could obtain. Tobacco-smoking is a social en- 
joyment, while the use of the opium-pipe is quite 
the reverse. Several smokers of opium may re- 
cline in the same room, but each smoker is wholly 
concerned with himself. A little conversation 
there may be at first, but soon each smoker draws 
himself like a snail into his own shell, and all is 
silence and repose. The little conversation at 
the beginning becomes, so soon as the drug takes 
effect, sententious and laconic ; and the choice bits 
of foolish wisdom that are passed from smoker 
to smoker would not be bad literature for Judge 
or Fuck. 

Some kind of a stimulant man must have. It 
is well, I think, to recognize that fact, and to 
set about finding him something less harmful than 



202 LOVE AND LETTERS 

opium or gin. Napoleon, like Dr. Johnson, was 
a confirmed tea drinker. So was Gladstone, who 
confessed that "he drank more tea between mid- 
night and daybreak than any other member of 
the House of Commons, and that the strongest 
brew of it never interfered with his sleep." The 
Dietetic and Hygienic Gazette has this interest- 
ing excerpt: 

"The dish of tea was one of the most important 
factors in Johnson's life. Proficiency in the gentle 
art of tea brewing was regarded by him as an 
essential attribute of the perfect woman, and there 
can be no doubt that his female friends (and their 
name was legion) did their best to gratify his amia- 
ble weakness. 

"Richard Cumberland tells us that his inordinate 
demands for his favorite beverage were occasionally 
difficult to comply with. On Sir Joshua Reynolds 
reminding him that he had already consumed eleven 
cups, he replied: 'Sir, I did not count your glasses 
of wine; why should you number my cups of tea."** 
adding laughingly and in perfect good humor: 
'Sir, I should have released our hostess from any 
further trouble, but you have reminded me that I 
want one more cup to make up the dozen, and I 
must request Mrs. Cumberland to round up my 
score.' 

"When he saw the complacency with which the 
lady of the house obeyed his behests he said cheer- 
ily: 'Madam, I must tell you, for your comfort, 
you have escaped much better than a certain lady 
did a while ago, upon whose patience I intruded 
greatly more than I have yours. She asked me 



OLD AGE 203 

for no other purpose than to make a zany of me 
and set me gabbing to a parcel of people I knew 
nothing of; so^ madam, I had my revenge on her, 
for I swallowed five and twenty cups of her tea.' 

"Cumberland declared that his wife would gladly 
have made tea for Johnson 'as long as the New 
River could have supplied her with water/ for it 
was then, and then only, he was seen at his happiest 
moment." 

Tea is a stimulant, and like coffee and cocoa, 
has a three-fold effect — on the circulation, on 
the spinal cord, and on the brain. It increases 
the flow of blood through the brain cells and 
supplies them with extra nutriment. This again 
results in quickened thought. If by the use of 
this stimulant thought could be turned on when 
needed and could be again turned off when no 
longer required, tea would be an ideal drink. 
Unfortunately, intellectual activity is kept up 
when the tired brain requires sleep, and thus it 
comes to pass that large quantities of Dr. John- 
son's strong brew may prove even more harmful 
than tobacco or spirits when used intemperately. 
Tea, coffee, and cocoa promote a feeling of well- 
being which is certainly most delightful, and it 
is not surprising that exhausted brain-workers 
have been tempted to use them immoderately. 
In preparing tea the leaves should never be boiled 
or stewed. The boiling water should in every 
case be poured on the leaves, and after standing 
for a few minutes should be again poured off. 
Tea should not be taken at the same meal with 



204 LOVE AND LETTERS 

flesh-meat, for it toughens the fibre of the meat 
and so renders it more or less indigestible. Bishop 
Berkeley, the distinguished philosopher whose 
theory of the nonexistence of matter has never 
been demolished, however much the experience 
of man may incline to a different explanation of 
the universe, was even more fond of tea than 
was Dr. Johnson. He expired drinking his fa- 
vorite beverage. One evening he and his family 
were sitting and drinking tea together, — he on 
one side of the fire, and his wife on the other, 
and his daughter making the tea at a little round 
table just behind him. She had given him one 
cup, which he had drunk. She had poured out an- 
other which he left standing some time. "Fa- 
ther," she asked, "will you not drink your tea?" 
Upon his making no answer, she stooped forward 
and looked at him, and found that he was dead. 
That was certainly a most beautiful way of dy- 
ing — quietly, with neither pain nor sad farewell, 
encircled by the loved ones, and with the hand 
resting upon a cup of refreshing beverage. 
Berkeley directed in his will that his body should 
be kept above ground more than five days, and 
until it became offensive. It was to remain un- 
disturbed and covered by the same bedclothes, in 
the same bed, the head raised upon pillows. 
Henry Ward Beecher was fond of strong coffee. 
The poet Schiller found himself better able to 
compose when he had before him on the table a 
few partly decayed apples; and when he could 
not have these he wanted coffee or champagne. 



OLD AGE 205 

The elder Kean had with him at the theatre 
brandy and beef -tea which he drank between the 
acts; he adapted, so it is said, his dinner to the 
part he must play. Mrs. Jordan took calf's- 
foot-jelly dissolved in sherry. Gladstone when 
he did not drink tea took egg beaten up in sherry. 
Nearly every man uses in one way or another 
tobacco. And what a blessing the weed is to 
thousands of our race. Listen to Boswell as he 
sings the praise of the various kinds of snuff: 

"O snuff! our fashionable end and aim, 
Strasburgh, Rappee, Dutch, Scotch, whate'er thy 

name; 
Powder celestial! quintessence divine! 
New joys entrance my soul, while thou art mine. 
By thee assisted, ladies kill the day,. 
And breathe their scandal freely o'er their tea; 
Not less they prize thy virtues when in bed; 
One pinch of thee revives the vapored head. 
Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze. 
Glows in the stars, and tickles in the sneeze." 

It was tobacco and not literature that made the 
name of John Nicot famous. His two books and 
the first French Dictionary, of which he was the 
compiler, could, never have saved from oblivion 
his worthy name. It was his introduction of the 
plant into France, and the adoption of his name 
as that of the oil contained in the leaves of the 
plant, that made Nicot's name familiar wherever 
the word "nicotine" is used. 

No doubt many users of tobacco have injured 



206 LOVE AND LETTERS 

their health and shortened their Hves by immod- 
erate use of the plant ; but surely the abuse of a 
thing furnishes no valid argiunent against its 
reasonable enjoyment. Nicot introduced some 
measure of contentment into the pleasant land of 
France when he introduced to its citizens the weed 
he loved so well. Moderately used, tobacco 
soothes the nerves and promotes peace. I do 
not know who wrote the famous "Recipe for Con- 
tent," but surely it is well worth remembering, 
and Nicot may be regarded as the first mixer 
of its wholesome ingredients: 

"Into a neat little room, all cozy and tight, 
Put two large glasses of Southern light; 
And an ounce of tobacco and a good easy chair. 
Then thicken with volumes all spicy and rare. 
Flavor with prints in the usual way 
And serve to the taste, on a dull rainy day." 

Tobacco, so beloved by the old, is itself a much 
older plant than most of those who smoke and 
chew its leaves suppose. We may laugh if we 
will at the grotesque conceit that Noah was in- 
toxicated with tobacco and not with wine, but 
nevertheless it seems to have something of the 
solemnity of a Greek Church "tradition." Dr. 
Yates, simple-minded man, tells us that he saw a 
picture of a smoking party in one of the ancient 
Egyptian tombs. The author of a little book 
on tobacco, published in London in 1859, admits 
that Yates may have seen the picture of a smok- 
ing party which he describes, but he slyly insin- 



OLD AGE 207 

uates that the original draughtsman was beyond 
all doubt not an ancient, but a modem Egyptian 
— some mischievous urchin of recent times who, 
tampering in sport with a real antique, "builded 
better than he knew," and cheated an unsuspect- 
ing archaeologist. It has also been suggested 
that the old Egyptian glass-blowers may be re- 
sponsible for this most absurd of blunders. 

We do not now use very much snufF, though it is 
still manufactured for royalty abroad and for 
Italian ecclesiastics. But everywhere men, and 
some women as well, smoke. Alcohol is even more 
common than tobacco. It has filled the world 
with its sorrow and gladness, and I fear that the 
sorrow is much in excess of the gladness. Dis- 
raeli consumed large quantities of champagne 
jelly. Thomas Paine was too fond of spirits for 
his own good, and so also was President Pierce, 
who was a very excellent man nevertheless. Poe, 
it is whispered, sometimes trifled with opium, not 
satisfied with things to drink. 

About alcoholic beverages there is, despite the 
tragedy that is never far away, much of romance 
and good-fellowship. But the Indian weed seems 
to eclipse all other stimulants in the delightful 
literature that gathers about it. And it adds 
something to its praise that there cleaves to its 
fragrant leaves so little of painful tragedy. 

As we advance in life time seems to fly with an 
ever increasing speed. And it is well that it is 
so. Our happiest years, which are usually those 
of early Hfe, linger as if loath to depart; but 



208 LOVE AND LETTERS 

our more helpless years, those of "the lean and 
slippered pantaloon," appear as anxious to be 
gone as does life itself, so like from first to last 
"an empty dream." Even when old age has be- 
come a great burden its years still appear swift: 

"The more we live, more brief appear 
Our life's succeeding stages, 
A day to childhood seems a year. 
And years like passing ages. 

Heaven gives our years of fading strength 

Indemnifying fleetness; 
And those of youth a seeming length 

Proportioned to their sweetness." 

When the end comes there often comes with 
it an imperative demand for rest. So urgent is 
the demand in some cases that the aged sufferer 
is unable to resist its pressure, and in a moment 
of weakness, it may be, he takes his own life. 
Lecky, in his "Map of Life," calls attention to a 
touching epitaph which he saw in a German 
churchyard : 

"I will arise, O Christ, when Thou callest me; but 
oh! let me rest awhile, for I am very weary." 

If we live long enough it is not unlikely that we 
shall even wish for death. There is an old Irish 
legend that illustrates that fact: In a certain 
lake in Munster, it is said, there were two islands ; 
into the first death could never enter, but age and 
sickness, and the weariness of life, and parox- 



OLD AGE 209 

ysms of fearful suffering were all known there, 
and they did their work till the inhabitants, tired 
of their immortality, learned to look upon the 
opposite island as upon a haven of repose. 
They launched their barks upon its gloomy wa- 
ters; they touched its shore, and they were at 
rest. 

With Plotinus, I thank God that my soul is 
not imprisoned within an immortal body, for in 
that case I should know a new mortality more to 
be feared than the one of which I now have 
knowledge. From every agony possible to man 
death furnishes a sure escape. A deathless body 
would mean living death. And yet men would 
close and fasten as with bolts of steel the one 
door without which hope were impossible. They 
would inscribe over the cradle of every infant 
the words that Dante saw over the Place of Doom. 
I could not wish to live were it not permitted me 
to die. 

Yet nevertheless there is a sense in which body 
and mind alike are under the dominion of death. 
Auguste Comte said in a moment of depression, 
"Death governs the living." He may not have 
really believed the sovereignty of death so vast, 
but that was what he said, and in a very impor- 
tant sense the saying is true. Through the long 
years we are engaged in warding off death. 
Thousands of men are in bondage all their days 
through fear of death; and the very persons 
who reprove them for this fear, and who en- 
deavor to rescue them from its baneful influence, 



210 LOVE AND LETTERS 

are themselves in many cases in bondage to the 
same dark dread. Porta was a distinguished 
surgeon at the University of Pavia. When, as 
sometimes happened, a patient died on the oper- 
ating table through the depressing influence of 
fear, Porta would, in a transport of rage, throw 
the instruments to the floor, shouting, "Cowards 
die from fear!" Was the surgeon himself then 
so brave a man? Ah, he also had his phobia. 
He knew moments of the deepest depression. 
Yet still it is true that great age often brings 
its own sweet release, and the fear dies before 
the coming of death itself. And sometimes the 
martial spirit common in youth returns late in 
life, and the familiar lines of Browning become 
an experience : 

"Fear death? — ^to feel the fog in my throat, 
The mist in my face, 
When the snows begin, and the blasts denote 
I am nearing the place. 

I was ever a fighter, so — one fight more. 

The best and the last! 
I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, 
and forbore. 
And bade me creep past. 
No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my 
peers. 
The heroes of old." 

Dr. Crothers, a distinguished physician who 
has given the best years of his life to the study 



OLD AGE 211 

of the psychological features of disease and also 
to the cure of the drug habit, has propounded 
a theory not wholly new, but still unlike any other 
in the results which must follow its acceptance. 
He wrote in a medical journal: **There are 
many reasons for believing that we carry around 
with us great reserve powers and unknown ener- 
gies which are seldom used, and that in old age 
appeal to these powers may give a certain vigor 
entirely unexpected which lengthens out life and 
practically overcomes disease." These "reserve 
powers and unknown energies" are, it is to be 
supposed, different from what is known as the 
subconscious self, but concerning that matter it 
is not necessary that we should speculate. Dr. 
Crothers tells us that did men but realize the hid- 
den powers they have always with them the "deep- 
est despondency would disappear from the 
continuous desire and effort to rise above it." 
In other words, this appeal may flood old age 
with a joy in life when, under ordinary circum- 
stances and in most men, it has departed with the 
vigor of early days. This theory, which is not 
without some evidence to sustain it, is yet new, 
and must await the results of further investiga- 
tion; but it certainly presents an alluring hope. 
Think what it really means to flood the sterile 
places of old age with the revitalizing tides of 
joy and expectancy, and to exterminate the rank 
and noxious weeds of despondency, doubt, and 
suspicion. We plant flowers over graves, but 
stiU the graves remain. Is this new theory an- 



212 LOVE AND LETTERS 

other planting of flowers over graves, or is there 
here an actual revitalizing and a resurrection of 
the man? Time only can answer that question. 
But still, one way or the other, old age, as has 
been shown, need not be utterly sad and lonely. 
Very much depends upon temperament, which 
is but another name for natural heritage, and 
over that we have no control. All we can do 
with it is to accept of it in whatever form it 
comes, and so to make of it the best use we can. 

Much of the loneliness of age is occasioned by 
the death of early friends and companions. The 
man who survives these in a certain sense survives 
himself. New friends are not easily made after 
one has reached the age of fifty. And with the 
loneliness of declining years there comes a con- 
sciousness of the approach of a loneliness even 
deeper than any of which we have made mention 
— the loneliness of death. 

"A lonely hour is on its way to each. 
To all; for death knows no companionship." 

All the supreme places and conditions of life 
are lonely. Thousands of men may die in battle 
within a very circumscribed area and at the same 
time, yet to each man death comes as a solitary 
event. Our associations are superficial when com- 
pared with our isolations. Since, then, we cannot 
escape the great solitudes of our existence, is it 
not well that we give some time to their consid- 
eration? We may, if we will, look Destiny in 
the face, and thus acquaint ourselves in advance 



SILENCE 117 

motive-engines and rattling car-wheels did not 
make sufficient noise. Think of a man who could 
travel around the country stirring up the crowd 
to take an interest in himself and in his magazine 
bj making a racket with his mouth. What a 
way to advertise a magazine or a paper! Sup- 
pose all the magazines in the land were to send out 
vociferous representatives to create a hubbub de- 
structive alike of sanity and physical health. 
Under such tumult and outcry men's minds and 
nerves must deteriorate. 

Perhaps the physician is the man to whom we 
should look for suggestions calculated to abate 
the nuisance of which we write, and from which 
we in common with thousands suffer. Dr. H. 
A. Boyce, the superintendent of the Kingston 
General Hospital and one of the leading physi- 
cians of Canada, while abroad visited an institu- 
tion where patients suffering from nervous 
disorders are cared for. He tells us in a paper 
which he read at a meeting of the Canadian 
Hospital Association held in Montreal on March 
25, 1910, and which was printed in the Medical 
Record of September 10, 1910, that what most 
impressed him in the institution he visited was 
the care taken to secure freedom from all unneces- 
sary noises. He was requested while in the build- 
ing to modulate his voice so that the patients 
might not be disturbed. He said among other 
things, in speaking of certain American hospitals 
for the care of persons afflicted with diseases of 
the nervous system: 



118 LOVE AND LETTERS 

"A friend of mine who was a patient in one of 
the largest hospitals in one of the largest cities of 
this continent, a hospital that deservedly enjoys a 
continental reputation, told me that its associations 
to her would always be crystallized in its personi- 
fication of not only perpetual motion, but noisy per- 
petual motion. When this is the impression given 
by one of the best institutions what must be that 
made by the rank and file." 

My own experience runs in the same direction. 
We are a noisy nation. In aU our streets are 
motor cars of every imaginable kind, making 
every sort of a noise from a faint whisper to a 
roar. They bellow, yell, shriek, and groan. All 
night you may hear them in the streets, and not 
a chauffeur or car-owner can be found who has 
the slightest regard for the rights of others. 
But, after all has been said, it still remains true 
that no sound is so cruel and evil in its results as 
is the untutored and unrestrained human voice. 
I have sometimes thought it might be in every 
way a blessing, were it only agreeable to public 
feeling, could the vocal organs of the worst 
offenders be extirpated. Think of the relief it 
would bring to this world were the entire race 
of stump-speakers deprived of that instrument of 
torture our anatomists call the larynx. The 
heavy mortality might be urged as an objection, 
but even this some of us could view with equa- 
nimity. 

If we ever succeed in suppressing the rude and 
barbarous sounds that render life in large cities 



SILENCE 119 

uncomfortable and even dangerous to health, it 
must be with the cooperation of physicians and 
men of scholarly temper and attainments. In 
the Dutch city of Utrecht there is what is be- 
lieved to be an absolutely noiseproof room. 
Heretofore it was Professor Wilhelm Wundt, of 
the psychological laboratory of Leipsig, who had 
come nearest to the scientific elimination of all 
sound from an inclosed space, but Professor 
Zwaardemaker, of Utrecht University, has gone 
one step further and he has communicated details 
of his achievement to the Amsterdam Royal Acad- 
emy of Science. 

For an absolutely noiseproof room it is essen- 
tial not only that no sound shall penetrate it 
from without, but also that it shall resist sound 
propagation, reflection and refraction within. 
The first problem is comparatively easy to solve. 
The walls of Professor Zwaardemaker's room con- 
sist of six layers alternately of wood, cork and 
sand. There are two spaces, one between the 
second and the third layer and one between the 
fourth and fifth, from which the air has been 
extracted. The inner walls are of porous stone 
covered with a kind of horsehair cloth known as 
trichopiese, a Belgian invention which is sound- 
resisting and is widely used in Belgium in tele- 
phone booths. The walls are pierced by acous- 
tically isolated leaden rods. The roof is com- 
posed of layers of lead, wood, asphalt, paper, 
sea grass and cork. The floor is of marble and 
is covered with a thickly woven Smyrna carpet. 



120 LOVE AND LETTERS 

An unsympathetic writer said, in describing the 
apartment: "A tomblike silence forever reigns 
in this elaborate room, which will be used only 
for clinical studies." In truth, the room is one 
pleasant to be in whether for rest or for study ; 
and the time will surely come when in all our 
large cities such rooms will be found. 

Gross materialism is at the foundation of no 
small part of the noise we encounter in the every- 
day living of the average man. The general 
tendency of materialism is in the direction of 
coarseness and rudeness: the coarse and rude are 
usually clamorous and tumultuous. Men who care 
nothing for the arts care no more for the ameni- 
ties. They see no reason why one who is able 
to storm the world should ever think of attacking 
it in any other way. They are unable to under- 
stand why an able-bodied man should interest 
himself in things that call for delicacy and fine- 
ness of perception. 

Imagination is as essential to civilization as 
are firmness and endurance. Without it you may 
have strong men, but they will be savages. One 
savage will make more noise than a thousand 
gentlemen, but with all his noise the poor savage 
is only a savage and nothing more. George 
William Curtis wrote, "Until we know why the 
rose is sweet, or the dew drop pure, or the rain- 
bow beautiful, we cannot know why the poet is 
the best benefactor of society. The soldier fights 
for his native land, but the poet touches that land 
with the charm that makes it worth fighting for." 



SILENCE 121 

The finer elements give value to life. Not the 
man who shouts himself hoarse over some popular 
idol, but the man who in silence and alone pierces 
to the core of things is the real man, and he will 
endure when aU the empty drum-heads no more 
resound. 

Neither fine personal culture nor yet anything 
resembling the best there is in art is likely to 
come of a republic. The rule of the average 
man, who is without other training than that 
which comes of a daily struggle with the hard 
necessities of life, will be marked by the noise 
and tumult by which he has been all his days 
surrounded. You might as well expect an unin- 
structed man to paint a great picture as to bring 
into existence and sustain noble and enduring in- 
stitutions. The rude clamor of vulgar strife for 
such poor returns as must always engage the 
attention of untutored men, can produce only 
self-exploitation and political chaos. 

Emerson said no truer thing than this, "The 
gentleman and lady make no noise." Fineness 
of touch indicates fineness of feeling. When 
John O'KeefFe described a fellow author as "all 
puff, rattle, squeak, and ding-dong," he described 
under the figure of a steamboat making final 
preparation for the voyage, an ill-bred and bad- 
mannered man wanting that ultimate efflorescence 
of civilization we call culture. Nothing meaner 
was ever said of Thomas Moore than this that 
Arthur Symons said: "Moore's trot, gallop, and 
jingle of verse has, no doubt, its skill and its 



122 LOVE AND LETTERS 

merit; but its skill is not seldom that of the cir- 
cus-rider, and its merit no more than to have 
gone the due number of times around the ring 
without slackening speed." When a man need- 
lessly slams the door, making every panel rattle 
and every nerve in my body frantic, I know with- 
out further evidence that I am in the presence of 
a rude fellow from whom I shall do well to escape 
so soon as possible. 

The new machine not yet perfected is noisy; 
when the machine shall have become sufficiently 
improved it will accomplish more and do its work 
in a better way, but there will be no more of the 
old-time clatter of its badly adjusted parts. It 
is so also with these human machines. Schopen- 
hauer had all this in mind when he wrote: "I 
have ever been of opinion that the amount of 
noise a man can support with equanimity is in 
inverse proportion to his mental powers, and may 
be taken, therefore, as a measure of intellect 
generally. If I hear a dog barking for hours 
on the threshold of a house, I know well enough 
what kind of brains I may expect from its in- 
habitants." 

To a thoughtful mind the silence of Nature is 
even more impressive than are the convulsions and 
tornadoes that startle and affright. The un- 
trained imagination is filled with surprise and 
wonder when fierce winds lash the ocean into 
wild and ungovemed fury ; but to poet and 
artist the serene glory of sunrise and the gentle 
approach of evening twilight present an attrac- 



SILENCE 123 

tion quite as pleasing as are the more exceptional 
displays of natural force. In the great world 
of human life of which we are a part the same 
thing is true. To a finely attuned temper and 
a cultivated mind there is an impressiveness in 
the silence of the right man at the right time 
that no display of passion can equal. The 
silence of our Saviour not only surprised Peter, 
but impresses and will always impress men by 
the fine eloquence of its rebuke. "Study to be 
quiet," wrote an apostle. Few of us, with all 
our study, have yet acquired much of that Di- 
vine skill. Even into our worship we have in- 
troduced a self-assertion that savors of self-will; 
we have invented pomps and splendors that 
belittle in the minds of men the greater majesty 
of Heaven. It may be that those who call them- 
selves "Friends" have in the simplicity of their 
manners and worship made religion unattractive 
and divested it of a beauty that might well belong 
to it; but it is also true that in our gorgeous 
rituals and ostentatious services we have lost sight 
of that spiritual beauty which is described in the 
Sacred Writings as "the beauty of holiness," 
and for the cultivation of which old-fashioned 
meditation and aloneness-with-God are essential. 
Our sermons are too often mere displays of 
learning and eloquence. Our prayers lack rever- 
ence and sincerity. Our sacred songs are fre- 
quently only musical exercises so arranged as to 
display the excellent voices in the choir-loft. We 
who know so little have so much to say to God 



124 LOVE, AND LETTERS 

that we have neither inclination nor time to at- 
tend to the things He would say to us. 
"Silence," wrote Carlyle, "is deep as Eternity, 
speech is shallow as Time." Before his day the 
Swiss said, "Sprechen ist silbem, Schweigen ist 
golden.'* Our best thoughts come of silence, 
without some measure of which we can never be 
anything but fools. How then, can a wise man 
delight in noise.? 

There is that in noise which belittles a man, 
and renders him vulgar and offensive. Children 
make a noise in order that they may attract 
attention. It is an early display of the "old 
Adam" of egotism. For the same reason "chil- 
dren of a larger growth" remain children all 
their days. Vulgar persons cannot be still one 
moment unless they are fast asleep. Culture dif- 
fers from rudeness in this, that it puts the man 
in possession of himself, gives him self-control and 
quiet habits. The largest part of every man 
remains unused for the reason that the man does 
not possess very much of himself. He is an un- 
reclaimed morass upon which no substantial 
structure may be builded. Yet men see that 
training is a beautiful thing, and they would have 
it appear to their neighbors that they have come 
to possess it. But no one will mistake the noisy 
appurtenances that are displayed for the gold 
and silver of that noble refinement which the 
ancients likened to a rose. That flower was con- 
secrated to Harpocrates, the god of silence; 
and to the men of early days it was a symbol of 



SILENCE 125 

peace and quietness. Suspended over the table 
at a banquet, the Romans regarded it as a guar- 
antee that nothing said by the guests would be 
elsewhere repeated. To noise about what was 
said sub rosa was a gross betrayal of confidence. 
So also the rose came to be carved above con- 
fessionals in many parts of Europe to show how 
strict should be the privacy observed; how silent 
the priest should remain into whose ear so many 
secrets are breathed. Over the urns that con- 
tained the ashes of their dead they scattered the 
sacred flower as a symbol of the silence and peace 
of that last sleep which they called "the rest." 
Drummond, the Scotch poet, often spoke of the 
rose as an emblem of that long repose for which 
he sighed; and he requested that upon the stone 
over his grave might be carved these lines : 

"Here Damon lies, whose songs did sometimes 
grace 
The murmuring Esk: — may roses shade the 
place." 

I have often wished there might be established 
in our turbulent United States a Society of the 
Rose (Centifolia, I should say) for the cultiva- 
tion of silence. There was once such a society 
at Amadan, in Persia, and of it Zeb, the Eastern 
philosopher, has left a lovely story which has 
been rendered into English by Madame de La- 
tour: 

"The Society (it was called an Academy) had 
the following rules: Its members must think much. 



126 LOVE AND LETTERS 

write a little, and be as silent as possible. The 
learned Zeb, celebrated through all the East, find- 
ing that there was a vacancy in the Society, en- 
deavored to obtain it for himself, but arrived, 
unfortunately, too late. The Society was annoyed 
because it had given to power what belonged to 
merit; and the president, not knowing how to ex- 
press a refusal without mortifying the assembly, 
caused a cup to be brought which he filled so full 
of water that a single drop more would have made 
it run over. The wise philosopher understood by 
that emblem that no place remained for him, and 
was retiring sadly when he perceived a rose petal 
at his feet. At that sight he took courage, seized 
the petal, and placed it so delicately on the water 
that not a drop escaped. At this ingenious allusion 
to the rules of the Society the whole assembly 
arose, and, gazing with delight upon the wise man, 
signified to him their acceptance of him as a fellow 
member. Not a word was said, but all was under- 
stood." 

There are indications that the authorities in 
some of our large cities are beginning to realize 
their responsibility in the matter of unnecessary 
noise. There have been instances in which the 
municipal authorities have stopped certain night 
noises in the neighborhood of hospitals. Such an 
instance occurred in Birmingham, England, a 
few years ago, when the city clock near the hos- 
pital, which loudly chimed each quarter of the 
hour to the distraction and hurt of the patients, 
was not permitted to sound its notes in the night 
hours. 



SILENCE 127 

There is now in the City of New York "The 
Society for the Suppression of Unnecessary 
Noise" which, though it has existed only four 
years, is doing effective work. Some of the 
noises made by steamboats are useless, and a few 
of these have been suppressed in the harbor of 
New York. "Hospital streets" have had warning 
signs posted near them, requesting that as little 
noise as possible be made in the neighborhood. 
School children have been instructed by the agents 
of the Society in the gentle art of quietness, which 
is only the art of generous consideration for oth- 
ers. It is to be hoped that at no distant day the 
Society will succeed in suppressing the horrible 
and in every way obnoxious Fourth of July 
racket, thus reducing the number of casualties 
which at present it is appalling to contemplate. 

Dr. Forbes Winslow was in his day, which was 
not so very long ago, a distinguished specialist 
in disorders of the mind and diseases of the nerv- 
ous system. Because I refer in this paper to the 
opinion of another physician I feel the more free 
to quote here the words of Dr. Winslow even 
though I know that to some of my readers what 
he has to say must appear extravagant. Thus 
he wrote a short time before his death: 

"By a simple arithmetical calculation it can be 
shown the exact year when there will be more in- 
sane persons in the world than sane. We are 
gradually approaching, with the decadence of youth, 
near proximity to a nation of madmen. An insane 
world is looked forward to by me with certainty in 



128 LOVE, AND LETTERS 

the not far distant future. The human race is de- 
generating." 

What noisy turbulence a world-wide lunatic 
asylum would bring with it! I cannot share Dr. 
Winslow's fear, nor can I look forward to a time 
when our human race will go stark mad. But 
I believe, with Dr. Winslow, that in many places 
our race has degenerated; and no one can doubt, 
I think, that the race is capable of still greater 
degeneration. We as a nation are now experi- 
menting with the theories of the brilliant and 
fantastic Rousseau — ^theories expressed in many 
places, but more especially in his famous book, 
"The Social Contract." It would have been 
much better for our world had the Frenchman 
stuck to his watch-making, and left philosophy 
to others ; though, in truth, his "Confessions" is 
a human document of no little value to mature and 
thoughtful minds. His theory of government 
has done, and will continue to do, much harm. 
The common people, untrained and in every way 
unfit to exercise the functions of government, are 
trusted with all the complicated and difficult ma- 
chinery of the State. They are now at work 
with vast noise and wild enthusiasm on the fool's 
experiment of self-government. What will come 
of it."^ Well, something very like the turbulence 
of Dr. Winslow's world-asylum. One may hear 
even now something of its noise. Plato was wiser 
than our witty Frenchman. This is what he has 
to say, or rather what he makes Socrates say : 



SILENCE 129 

"Citizens . . . you are brothers, yet God 
has framed you differently. Some of you have the 
power of command, and these he has composed of 
gold, wherefore also they have the greatest honor; 
others of silver, to be auxiliaries; others again, who 
are to be husbandmen and craftsmen, he has made 
of brass and iron; and the species will generally 
be preserved in the children. But as you are of 
the same original family, a golden parent will some- 
times have a silver son, or a silver parent a golden 
son. And God proclaims to the rulers, as a first 
principle, that before all they should watch over 
their offspring, and see what elements mingle with 
their nature; for if the son of a golden or silver 
parent has an admixture of brass and iron, then 
Nature orders a transposition of ranks, and the eye 
of the ruler must not be pitiful towards his child 
because he has to descend in the scale and become 
a husbandman or an artisan; just as there may be 
others sprung from the artisan class, who are raised 
to honor, and become guardians and auxiliaries. 
For an oracle says that when a man of brass or iron 
guards the State, it will then be destroyed." 

This is royal wisdom come down from distant 
ages, but there is a Divine Wisdom even more 
ancient in the words of the Preacher: "Woe 
unto thee, O land, when thy king is a child." 
Woe unto whatever land is ruled by brass and 
iron. A Latin line too often quoted tells us that 
the voice of the people is that of God. It is 
nothing of the kind. Counting noses will give 
us no Divine Wisdom. 

Religion owes as much to silence as silence owes 



130 LOVE AND LETTERS 

to it. It was only when the Patriarch was sur- 
rounded by silence that he could hear the voice 
of God. "Commune with your heart," wrote 
the Psalmist, "and be still." "Be still," said the 
Eternal, "and know that I am God." How many 
eremites and holy men have sought the knowledge 
of God, not in schools and books, but in the 
stillness of their own hearts. The history of the 
Christian Church is full of beautiful instances of 
the acquirement of the knowledge of divine things, 
not by the rude clamor of discussion, but by the 
cultivation of a quiet spirit. Our Saviour sought 
the silence of the hills, and was all night in prayer 
that He might thus refresh his soul and acquire 
strength for the great mission of His wonderful 
and blessed life. And what humanizing and civ- 
ilizing results have come to the world through 
these seasons and lives of silence and soli- 
tude. Alone in caves and desert places the Sa- 
cred Scriptures and the ancient classics were 
translated into living languages that men could 
read. Some of these recluses were themselves gen- 
tle and inspiring poets whose words have com- 
forted and instructed the hearts of men in all 
succeeding ages. 

Saint Simeon, the hermit, who was bom in 
Aleppo, where with wealthy and distinguished 
parents he passed his youth, was a noble instance 
of literary as well as of spiritual devotion. When 
a young man he went to Alexandria, where after 
only six years of study he became one of the 
learned men of the world. It was in Alexandria 



SILENCE ISl 

that he found the new faith and became a Chris- 
tian. Every effort was made to prevent him from 
going into the desert, but nothing could shake 
his determination. He lived many years on a 
rugged clijff over-hanging the banks of the Eu- 
phrates. Alone he thought and prayed, and 
composed some of the most lovely lines of verse 
that have come down to us from the past. One 
sees at once his love of solitude and silence in 
his poem, "The Sabbath Morning." He sings: 

"Sweet Sabbath morning! — On my wakeful ear 
No eager voices rush; all is still here! 
Save when some early songster, singing near. 
Comes to delight me, warbling strong and clear." 

It was not unbroken silence that this saint in- 
sisted upon, for to him the bird-song was pleas- 
ing. He longed for and sought stillness of the 
soul: the same stillness the Friends or Quakers, 
so unhke him in faith, hold to be essential to 
spiritual growth. 

This sense of need that leads the anchorite to 
seek some measure of silence is not peculiar to 
those who receive the Christian faith. There are 
thousands of Buddhist monks and hermits in 
India who place greater emphasis upon the im- 
portance of silence than do Christian hermits. 
Oriental literature is full of devout and mystical 
poems that recommend and call for quietness of 
spirit. The Buddha was himself a religious re- 
cluse, though he had his disciples, and associated 
in some measure with his fellow men. The quiet- 



132 LOVE AND LETTERS 

ness of all God's operations as compared with 
those of His creatures is a favorite theme with 
Eastern poets. Thus sings an Oriental mystic: 

"In silence wise men oft great things have to per- 
fection brought; 
And fools as oft have made a most tremendous 
noise for naught. 

The mighty sky-wheel rolls about its axis without 

sound : 
The weaver's rickety spool rattles its clattering 

course around. 

This wooden bobbin only a small piece of linen 

yields : 
That azure one with starry veil o'erspreads 

heaven's boundless fields." 

Mohammed was a child of solitude and silence. 
His visions came to him when he was far out on 
the desert. It was there, surrounded by natural 
desolation, that he discovered the spiritual deso- 
lation of his time and country. On wild and 
lonely Mount Hara, near Mecca, he received his 
first revelation, and from that deserted and re- 
mote elevation he went forth proclaiming to an 
idolatrous world the One God of Islamism. 

Apuleius tells us, in his "Golden Ass," that he 
was able to pray to the Goddess Isis because of 
the silence of the night. The great prayers of 
all ages and of all religions have demanded 
tranquillity of spirit; they were possible only in 
the hush of a calm and undisturbed temper to 



SILENCE 183 

which the stillness of surrounding nature in many 
cases contributed much. Prayer is the very heart 
of religion. There can be no religion without 
this inner communion of the soul with God. 
What is called "natural religion" is, in so far 
as it is prayerless, no religion at all. Religion 
without prayer is only philosophy, and has noth- 
ing whatever to do with the deep places of spir- 
itual experience. Can anyone think of such 
prayers as those of Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, 
Saint Bernard, Loyola, Fox, Wesley, and George 
Miiller in connection with natural religion? 
Great achievements are born of a deep serenity 
of the soul. Our Saviour was most of the time 
during the evenings of the last week of his life 
alone. He sought the silence of mountain and 
wilderness, and wandered about among the olive- 
groves and the gardens, his soul coming into 
closer and closer relations with the Heavenly Fa- 
ther. Max Miiller calls religion "a perception of 
the Infinite." Herbert Spencer tells us that re- 
ligion is "awe in the presence of the majesty of an 
inscrutable power in the universe." Dr, Lyman 
Abbott has, I think, come even closer to the mean- 
ing of the word; he tells us that "religion is the 
play of the Infinite on the finite in the moral 
realm." Is it not "the life of God in the soul 
of man?" And is not that life one of repose in 
light, of which serenity is an essential element? 

The material that seems so substantial passes 
away; only the things that pertain to the spir- 
itual nature endure. Tyre and Sidon were cities 



134 LOVE AND LETTERS 

of wealth and splendor; they bought and sold, 
and their streets were lined with stately palaces: — 

"Where now are the ships of Tarshish, the mighty 
ships of Tyre?" 

The poet answers his own question: 

"There is no habitation; the mansions are defaced. 
No mariners of Sidon unfurl your mighty sails; 
No workmen fell the fir-trees that grow in 

Shenir's vales, 
And Bashan's oaks that boasted a thousand years 

of sun. 
Or hew the masts of cedar on frosty Lebanon." 

Athens taught the world, and to-day the world 
acknowledges her supremacy. The Parthenon is 
but a ruin, yet the Greek spirit lives, and will live 
so long as men are ruled by the mind and not by 
the body. "Still Greece is queen: still Greece is 
goddess. A counting house passes away : a school 
remains. What man or city lives by bread alone 
must perish." 

But while it is true that the things of the mind 
come first and are of the greater importance; 
while it is true that the poet's prayer that God 
would give, were it only for a brief season, a 
mind "crystal clear as the blue sky" Is a worthy 
one, still it is a great mistake to educate at ran- 
dom. It is a grave error to so educate young 
men and young women that they must be forever 
after unhappy in the humble places they are called 
to fill. Education alone will confer neither recti- 



SILENCE 135 

tude nor happiness. It is not true that knowl- 
edge is power at all times and in all places. It 
has rendered many a man both weak and 
miserable. We all remember the story of the 
blacksmith. His eyes were opened to the risks 
he was incurring in his impromptu and rude 
surgical operations, and never again could he 
be persuaded to do the work he had been so ready 
to do before he had been taught the nature and 
possible results of those surgical operations. 
Festus said to Paul, "Much learning doth make 
thee mad." He was mistaken, and yet beyond 
all doubt much learning has more than once over- 
thrown reason. There are too many helps up- 
ward, and not enough methods of getting rid of 
the ignorant and worthless. Huxley is right in 
advising us to take away artificial props. Let 
the stupid and incompetent descend. So long as 
labor-unions and unions of various kinds can 
secure for good and bad work the same compen- 
sation there will be no good work of any kind. 

Thousands of young men have no use for 
"higher education." To them such education is 
not a blessing but a curse. The training should 
be fitted to the station in life. We are in no 
pressing need of poets, artists, and songsters. 
Hundreds of men are starving in all three call- 
ings. We want good mechanics, and men who 
are able and willing to work in useful occupations. 
But republican institutions are not favorable to 
service of any kind. Where all are equal no man 
or woman is wilHng to be a servant. The very 



136 LOVE AND LETTERS 

name is despised. The cook, the chambermaid, 
and the laundress are insulted when you describe 
them as servants. The ash-man has become trans- 
mogrified into an ash-gentleman, and the sales- 
woman must be addressed as saleslady. 

We are a rude and noisy nation, self-assertive, 
over-fond of the dollar, and impatient of delay 
in arriving at results. No doubt we have stalwart 
virtues and many generous instincts, but we are 
a young nation, and have the faults of youth, 
with some other faults that are not peculiar to 
early life. If we ever come to anything like the 
culture of older nations it must be through the 
same channel of escape of which they availed 
themselves. As there are, as has been pointed out, 
many words in our language that by their sound 
suggest their meaning, so there are words that by 
their derivation suggest the spirit that gave them 
currency. Our word "hurrah," which some de- 
rive from one root and some from another, has 
been thought to mean etymologically "to whirl." 
There is a sense of rotary motion in the sound 
of the word. Later research derives it from a 
Turkish term, meaning "to kill." It is in reahty 
a battle-cry, full of sound and fury. In the days 
of the Crusades the shout "hurrah" betokened 
and presaged dire slaughter. What a word it 
is that we as a people have adopted to signify 
national enthusiasm and public applause. Com- 
pare it with the gentle "banzai" (success) of the 
Japanese. When I was in Germany I was aston- 
ished at the great love of art, and especially of 



SILENCE 137 

music, which the people at all times manifested. 
The arts go together. Music leads on to archi- 
tecture, and these two are never far away from 
painting and sculpture. We as a nation have 
accomplished little with any of the fine arts. We 
shall never accomplish much with them unless we 
acquire a more tranquil spirit. 

Music, though a fine art, and closely related to 
all the fine arts, is still in a way very different 
from painting and sculpture, as Professor Jules 
Combarieu has pointed out in his "Music, its 
Laws and Evolution." 

"Music is the only popular art. It draws its sub- 
stance from social life, as a plant draws its substance 
from the soil into which its roots plunge. There is 
no popular painting, no popular sculpture. Archi- 
tecture is too comphcated an art, too loaded with 
technical knowledge and archaeology, and too much 
subjected to the prejudices of luxury or to special 
needs, to be the spontaneous product of a com- 
munity. To music alone, and to its younger sister, 
poetry, belongs this privilege. 

"Such are the principles we shall elucidate when 
reviewing different peoples and ages. Taking as 
our basis the first proposition, that music is the art 
of thinking in sounds, we shall reserve to ourselves 
the right of adding this, which is founded on ob- 
servation: Musical thought is the manifestation of a 
general and deep instinct, more or less hidden, but 
everywhere recognisable in humanity." 

After the above statement we have this summary : 



138 LOVE AND LETTERS 

"Music — a synthesis of sounds not to be confused 
with purely sonorous phenomena — has a meaning un- 
translatable into verbal language; it is formed by a 
thought without concepts, rhythmically constructed, 
of which we cannot anywhere find the equivalent." 

Referring again to the subject of music, it is 
worth while to remember in this connection the 
part music plays in the expression of the emo- 
tions. Music is the modem method of giving 
utterance to whatever is finest in feeling and in 
the emotions. It was through plastic art that 
the ancients voiced the deep experiences, the hopes, 
desires, and forebodings of the human heart. 
The mediaeval world made use of painting for 
the same end. Each art has its own peculiar 
excellence, but of them all music is certainly the 
finest, — the most ethereal and delicate. The finer 
the physical organization, the more offensive the 
corruption that takes place in that organization 
after death. The decay of a human body is 
much more loathsome than is the disintegration 
of the body of one of the lower animals. So is 
it also with the arts. The finer the art, the more 
distressing is its degradation. President Lowell 
of Harvard University thinks that in the United 
States music is suffering a progressive degenera- 
tion. He said in an address before the Music 
Teachers' National Association in the winter of 
1910, at Boston : 

"One can hardly fail to be struck by the pro- 
gressive degeneration of the popular taste in music. 



SILENCE 139 

We have music — good music. The taste of culti- 
va,te(i people in Boston has been immensely helped 
by the Symphony Orchestra. But what I refer to 
is the popular taste in music. T^iis means not only 
the great mass, but even educated people who make 
no pretense of knowing music." 

"Our people are totally deficient in the power of 
expressing any of the finer qualities of emotion in 
common. Their effort takes a conventional form 
which is barren, meagre and poor. The most ef- 
fective and natural form of expressing emotion is 
music. The place of real expression of emotion at 
alumni dinners has been taken by organized cheer- 
ing. That shows that men who have the highest 
education we can give are wholly lacking in those 
more delicate qualities of expressing emotion. 

"I speak advisedly when I say progressive degen- 
eration. For thirty years expression has become 
shallower and feebler. There was practically no 
cheering when I was in college. If we are right in 
saying that music is the natural form of expressing 
emotion at the present day, this present condition of 
music is a sign that educated people as a rule have 
no emotions that are worth expressing or that they 
are signally deficient in the art of expressing emo- 
tion. The latter, I think, is true." 

To plunder music of its sweet and gracious 
ministry to the finer side of man's nature is to 
rob the heart of one of its greatest treasures. 
It is to defile a sacred thing. Rude and vulgar 
songs that catch the ear, and that require no 
cultivation of any kind, are the foes of all good 



140 LOVE AND LETTERS 

music. President Lowell said in the address from 
which we have already quoted: 

"One of the saddest things is to go into a gather- 
ing of college men or even alumni and hear the 
kind of music they have at their dinners. It is 
ragtime and ragtime of very poor quality. They 
seem to care very little for good music. What they 
want is a catchy song, something they can join in 
after exhausting their voices in organized cheering. 
Of all the means of expressing emotion, organized 
cheering is the worst from every point of view. It 
is bad for the throat for one thing. It has less 
modulation, less means of expressing degrees and 
varieties of emotion of any kind than any other 
form of expression except a fog horn," 

Every word in the above paragraph is true. 
Could any concurrence of tuneful sounds be more 
rude than is the variety called, most fittingly, 
"rag-time" music.'* Think of a hundred or more 
young men from a university or a seminary of 
learning of whatever kind giving expression to 
their feelings in music of that sort. Think of 
those young men screaming out in shrill tones 
the "college yell," which is nothing but a suc- 
cession of meaningless noises; brutal sound sug- 
gestive of animal excitement and nothing more. 
The uneducated human voice, whether displayed 
in "rag-time" songs, the college yell, the Indian 
war-whoop, or in those strident tones that mark 
the low-bom everywhere, is distressing to the cul- 
tivated mind and ear. There is in it no thought 



SILENCE 141 

of anything like courtesy, training, or fine feel- 
ing. 

A writer in the Interstate Medical Journal for 
December, 1910, expresses himself thus: 

"We are now speaking of the American voice, 
which has a chromatic scale no other voice possesses, 
and so many irritating qualities that, were a nerve 
removed from the healthiest body and subjected to 
the pricking of its many stridencies, we are quite 
sure it would wriggle at once with an activity that 
could not be interpreted as aught but a mild pro- 
test. Now, can it be said that an occasional noise 
such as emanates from a motor car, a street car, or 
from a factory whistle, can play the same havoc 
with our powers of resistance that is effected by 
the uninterrupted iteration of a noise that follows 
us even into the sanctity of our homes? Surely, 
the American voice as it falls upon our ears must 
make for so tight a clutch on our nerves that the 
combined effect of all other noises dwindles into 
comparative insignificance." 

"Let us allow our friend to go to his favorite 
haunts in search of the cure his tortured nerves de- 
mand — those nerves that unwittingly subjected 
themselves throughout the day to all the city noises, 
including the ubiquitous and omnipresent vocal 
harshness in street and business houses — and what 
alleviation of his perturbed condition is effected? 
Again he hears tones that soothe not, sounds that 
seem to issue from the top of the head after cir- 
cuitous journeys through the narrowest of passages, 
and a vocalism that is so high-pitched that all its 



142 LOVE AND LETTERS 

nasalities act upon his sensitiveness as would pin 
pricks. Still ignorant of the reason why his spirits 
continue to be ruffled he wanders homeward, and the 
peace that comes to his tired brain during sleep is 
again rudely jarred." 

It would not be difficult to substantiate the 
statement made by President Lowell with regard 
to the selection of popular and inferior music 
for the entertainment of guests at receptions and 
public gatherings. Here is the programme of 
musical pieces rendered during a reception given 
by Governor Dix of New York at the official 
mansion in Albany, a few hours after his in- 
auguration. The pieces are not what would be 
called "rag-time," but surely they are not clas- 
sical, nor are they even elegant: 

March — Bunch of Roses Chapi 

Selection — Madame Sherry Hoschna 

Potpouri — The Girl in the Train Fall 

Fantasia — Bright Eyes Klein 

Gems from Naughty Marietta Herbert 

Medley — Remick's Hits Redfield 

Intermezzo — Pensee D'Amour Latan 

Selection — Dollar Princess Spink 

Valse Lente — Cupid's Caress Roberts 

Finale — Tales of Hoffman OflPenbach 

To the finely organized temperament of Scho- 
penhauer the foolish conversations of uninformed 
and thoughtless persons brought not only weari- 
ness but great vexation of spirit. "Conversation 
with others," said the uncompromising thinker, 



SILENCE 14)3 

^'leaves an unpleasant tang; the employment of 
the soul in itself leaves an agreeable echo." 
Again he said, "The jabber of companies of 
men is as profitless as the idle yelping of packs 
of hounds." So also, in his little hut on Walden 
Pond, thought the poet and naturalist, Henry 
David Thoreau. He would pass entire days in 
silent communion with Nature. Whatever of 
noise and bustle in life forced itself upon Scho- 
penhauer utterly failed of reaching his secret 
soul. There is something sad to the ordinary 
man in the thought of living alone, especially 
as age advances, and even more sad is it to die 
alone, — to pass silently into the everlasting si- 
lence unattended and with no friend at hand. 
But Schopenhauer was not an ordinary man. 
He died as he had lived, with his ears closed to the 
babble of empty voices. Aristotle reports that 
Satyrus stopped his ears with wax when he was to 
plead a cause so that he might not be thrown off 
his guard by the retorts of enemies. Schopen- 
hauer was determined that the powers of his mind 
should not be frittered away by foolish speech. 
To the end he resisted vain conversation and 
empty noise, and he died as he had lived. The 
physician who attended him stepped from the 
room, and returned after but a minute or two. 
On his return he found the philosopher dead. 
Sitting in the comer of the sofa, with a smile 
upon his face, his still open eyes gazed as if he 
were alive upon the gilded statuette of the Buddha 
upon the mantel-piece. A great treasure to 



144* LOVE AND LETTERS 

Schopenhauer was a copy of the Upanishads 
(the Latin translation of Anquetil Duperron, 
which was published at Strassburg in 1802). 
The system advanced in that work is, as all read- 
ers know, one of pantheism. I have often won- 
dered at the strong hold this system, in one form 
or another, has upon superior minds. Of the 
Upanishads he wrote: "It is the most profita- 
ble and the most elevating reading which (the 
original text excepted) is possible in the world. 
It has been the consolation of my life, and it will 
be the consolation of my death." Standing by 
Schopenhauer's grave in the cemetery at Frank- 
fort, I thought of the little band of remarkable 
men who gathered about that grave the early 
spring day when our philosopher was laid to 
rest. "There is something," said one of them, 
"that tells us he has found satisfaction for his 
solitude." Let us hope that so strange a jour- 
ney ended at last in peace. Commenting upon 
the burial of Schopenhauer, my friend of earlier 
days with whom I have passed many pleasant 
hours, and who himself now rests beneath the 
hallowed shades of Mount Auburn, William 
Rounseville Alger, said in his "Genius of Soli- 
tude," "If the Christian heaven be a verity, he 
is there with the Saviour who revealed the God of 
the parable of the Prodigal Son. ... If 
that heaven be only the dream he thought It, then 
he is where he aspired to be, with Kapila, Sakya 
Muni, and the other conquering kings of mind. 



SILENCE 145 

Went in the unknown destiny of the All, clasped 
in the fruition of Nirwana." 

"As the truest society approaches always 
nearer to solitude," wrote Thoreau in his "Con- 
cord and Merrimack Rivers," "so the most ex- 
cellent speech finally falls into silence. Silence 
is audible to all men, at all times, and in all 
places. . . . AH sounds are her servants and 
purveyors, proclaiming not only that their mis- 
tress is, but is a rare mistress, and earnestly to 
be sought after." 

Plutarch has recorded that the citizens of 
Athens upon a certain occasion gave a feast and 
thereto invited the ambassadors of the King of 
Persia. The conversation was most animated. 
Much wine loosened many tongues, and things 
that should not have been even hinted at were 
freely discussed. Zeno, the Stoic, was present, 
but he remained so quiet that many were unaware 
of his presence. Surprised at his silence, the 
guests pressed him to drink. When, after sev- 
eral cups, he still remained silent, the ambassa- 
dors, who were well acquainted with his reputa- 
tion for learning, enquired of Zeno what report 
they should make to their Royal Master. The 
sage replied, "Say there was an old man in 
Athens who could hold his tongue." It is a 
great thing to be able to control so unruly a 
member. Genius is often associated with silence, 
but never with loquacity. Learning makes no 
noise. Brass bands and tinsel indicate a low 
order of intelligence. Yet multitudes are de- 



146 LOVE AND LETTERS 

ceived by sound and fury, and follow without 
thought the popular hero until in time he ex- 
plodes and there is an end of him. Silence is a 
vast ocean into which at last all the discordant 
streams of speech find rest. No one associates 
Eternity with the thought of noise. The poets 
describe its vast expanse, voiceless and serene, as 
the end of all the rush and tumult of man's little 
life on earth. The philosophers go more deeply 
into the science of the subject, though, doubtless, 
even they might learn some things of more or less 
importance from their romantic neighbors the 
poets, who sing the truth into our hearts while, 
more laboriously, these toiling sons of the earth 
discourse to our understanding in the duller terms 
of the intellect. 

Preyer defines silence as a state of uniform 
minimum excitation of the auditory nerve-fibres, 
and joins issue with Fechner and others who deny 
its claim to be regarded as a positive form of 
sensation at all. Fechner distinguishes between 
the effect of absence of light upon the eye, and 
that of absence of sound upon the ear; black he 
regards as a sensation, silence as an absence of 
all sensation. Preyer points out, on the con- 
trary, that the two cases are in every way anal- 
ogous, and that the auditory organ never sinks, 
any more than the retina, below the zero of sen- 
sation. The pressure of the fluid contents of the 
labyrinth, and the flow of blood through the 
vessels, must give rise to sensations of which we 
are unconscious only because of their uniform- 



SILENCE 147 

ity, their constancy, and their low degree of 
intensity. Silence, when the attention is con- 
centrated on the sense of hearing, is found to 
vary in degree, just as the blackness of the visual 
field, when light is excluded from the eye, has 
been observed to vary ; but the complete absence 
of sensation is obviously incapable of varying. 



IV 
NOBLE DEEDS OF HUMBLE MEN 

"So nigh is grandeur to our dust. 
So near is God to man. 
When Duty whispers low, 'Thou must/ 
The youth replies, *I can !' " 

— Emerson. 

"Among the Germans of the forest, when a young 
man came of age, he was solemnly invested with 
shield and spear. The ceremony of Knighthood at 
first was nothing more. Every man of gentle birth 
became a knight, and then took an oath to be true to 
God and to the ladies and to his plighted word; to 
be honorable in all his actions; to succor the op- 
pressed." 

— The Martyrdom of Man. 



NOBLE DEEDS OF HUMBLE MEN 

TT has always seemed to me that a book 
-■• chroniding the deeds of courage and self- 
sacrifice that are constantly performed by men 
and women in humble stations and in out-of-the- 
way places in life would be well worth writing. 
When I prepared the chapter on "Heroes of 
Humble Life" in my volume "The Companion- 
ship of Books," ^ I had in mind some such work, 
and I viewed the chapter as an experiment in 
that direction. The thought was never followed 
up, and yet so great has been my interest in the 
matter that I have from time to time clipped from 
the daily papers articles and paragraphs that 
seemed to me to record in striking terms the noble 
and daring exploits of obscure men and women. 
A book of the kind, extended to three or even 
four hundred pages, could not but increase one's 
respect for our human race, and reassure the soul 
in moments of discouragement and despondency. 
The heart-breaking selfishness of the world is too 
dense and extended to be ignored, and yet there 
is another side to both individual and social life. 
Paragraphs such as those about which I am now 
writing show, often in beautiful colors and high 
relief, the intrinsic nobleness and magnificent 
possibilities of human nature. They make it 
clear that the disinterested spirit and heroic 
temper of earlier ages, which we so greatly ad- 

1 Published by G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1906. 
151 



152 LOVE AND LETTERS 

mire, are not dead; and that all about us are 
men and women of heroic proportions, though of 
obscure and lowly life. The hour still finds the 
man awaiting the divine call; and Duty is as 
cheerfully performed now as it was in the earlier 
centuries when cruelty, oppression, and persecu- 
tion inspired fortitude and increased the power of 
faith. 

Take for instance the splendid heroism of an 
Alpine guide who something like ten years ago 
proved himself, in all that makes a chivalrous 
and fearless manhood, the equal of the bravest 
soldier who ever faced the foe on field or flood. 
Professor Nasse was well-known, not only in 
Berlin, where was his home, but throughout the 
scientific world, as one of the most intrepid and 
successful mountain climbers. With Dr. Boch- 
ardt, a man of like fame and spirit, and two 
guides. Professor Nasse ascended one of the 
most difficult of all the Alpine peaks. The four 
men roped together were crossing the Piz Baine, 
on their return from their climb. The guides 
considered a snow bridge before them perfectly 
safe, and accordingly the four men proceeded 
to cross it, when suddenly it gave way and the 
leading guide and Professor Nasse fell into the 
crevasse. Nasse had the rope around his chest 
and hung in mid-air. The strain upon his chest 
was very great, and it was evident that life could 
not be long sustained unless the pressure could 
be in some measure lightened. 

For half an hour man and guide hung sus- 



NOBLE DEEDS OF HUMBLE MEN 153 

pended thus in mid-air, the guide bringing all 
his weight to bear upon the chest of Professor 
Nasse. The guide could have hung there till 
rescued, but every moment brought death nearer 
to Nasse. This the guide fully understood. 
Bravely, without hesitation, he deliberately drew 
from his belt the knife which he always carried, 
and cut the rope that bound him to Professor 
Nasse. In an instant the pressure was removed, 
and Nasse swung free, but alas! he was dead. 
That the guide, of course, could not have known, 
as the pressure of the rope prevented Nasse from 
speaking. As a stone drops into an abyss, so 
the guide plunged into the depths below and dis- 
appeared. The other guide and Dr. Bochardt 
were now able to pull the body of Nasse up. 
Many hours later the hero who had faced death 
so bravely was found uninjured. He struck in 
his descent a mass of soft snow that covered a 
ledge of ice, and so broke the force of a fall of 
more than fifteen hundred feet. 

No one can read of an act like that, performed 
in the face of almost certain death, by an obscure 
guide, without realizing that the heroic elements 
in our common humanity are very far from being 
extinct. Alas, that the deed should be so soon 
forgotten! Less valorous exploits of distin- 
guished military leaders are recorded upon the 
page of history, and are celebrated in song and 
story, but we do not even know the name of the 
noble and intrepid guide. 

Only seven years ago, William Phelps, of Rich- 



154j love and letters 

mond, Kentucky, and James Stansbury, of In- 
dianapolis, were cleaning the interior of an eight- 
foot upright boiler in the Cerealine Mills. They 
were humble men who earned a meagre living. 
No one dreamed that under a red flannel shirt 
of the cheapest quality, and not over clean at 
that, beat the lion-heart of as noble a hero as 
ever breathed the breath of life. While the two 
men were working an employee turned on the 
steam, thinking the cock was tight; it leaked, 
and the scalding steam poured in on the two men. 
The only exit was up a ladder to a man-hole 
in the top. Both jumped for the ladder. 
Phelps reached it first, took one step and stopped. 
He sprang aside and shouted: "You first, Jim; 
you are married, and I have no wife and no 
children dependent upon my toil." Stansbury 
escaped, but Phelps, standing aside for the sake 
of the wife and the little children, was cooked to 
death. 

Over the body of General John E. Wool, in 
Oakwood cemetery, Troy, N. Y., stands, visible 
for miles around, the tallest monolith that art 
ever shaped in this country for either the living 
or the dead. I never heard that any costly mon- 
ument was erected over the grave of William 
Phelps to commemorate a holy deed of most beau- 
tiful heroism and Christ-like love. No doubt 
Wool was a brave soldier, and will be remembered 
in history as he should be; but to my thinking, 
nothing in all his military career compares in 



NOBLE DEEDS OF HUMBLE MEN 155 

splendor with the brave deed and noble death of 
that obscure workman. 

There lives unknown save for a few newspaper 
paragraphs, in Morristown, New Jersey, a crip- 
ple named Joe Gilligan, who ten years ago was 
run over by a trolley car in Brooklyn. One leg 
was cut off above the knee and the other below 
the knee, and his right arm was also amputated. 
A poor mutilated body is that of Joe Gilligan, 
but it holds the noble and beautiful soul of a 
true hero worthy of a place with the bravest and 
best. June the nineteenth, in the year nineteen 
hundred and eight, that wreck of a human body 
swam out in Gravel Pit pond and saved the lives 
of two children who had overturned their boat 
and were drowning. Joe was sitting with other 
boys under a tree out of sight of the pond. He 
had removed his artificial legs and was showing 
them to several lads, when he heard the frantic 
call for help. To that call he responded in- 
stantly. He had no time to put on his wooden 
legs, but running as he had learned to do upon 
his stumps, Joe made his way to the pond, shout- 
ing, "Hold fast! I'm coming!" He swam out, 
grasped the two boys and pulled them apart. 
With the one hand — it was all he had — ^he held 
one boy above the water and managed to get him 
ashore. Then he returned and caught the other 
boy just as he was relaxing his hold upon the 
overturned boat and was slipping into the water. 
He saved both the children who, after they had 



156 LOVE AND LETTERS 

revived, picked up the poor, little mutilated body 
and carried it with grateful tears to its humble 
home. 

I have in a drawer to my study table a number 
of newspaper clippings, all of which are radi- 
antly beautiful with like stories of nobleness and 
daring. Another lad, only fourteen years of 
age at the time, saved six drowning persons, and 
then refused to give his name to the reporter, 
saying: "I do not want to be printed; I only 
did my duty." His name should be remembered, 
and though he withheld it, I give it to the world 
— it was William McGrane. 

The story of the heroism of Mrs. Wilson, who, 
in 1872, after her husband had been disabled, as- 
sumed command of his ship and brought it safely 
to port in the face of the greatest perils, is well 
worth recording. The following account of her 
exploit was printed in an English journal in 
July, 1872:* 

"The ship Sharron, 1,800 tons, of St. John, N. B., 
Wilson master, sailed from New York with a gen- 
eral cargo on February 14, 1872, bound for Liver- 
pool, She encountered a terrific gale on the Banks 
of Newfoundland, the cargo shifted and the ship 
was hove on her beam ends. A terrible sea was 
running, and they had to cut away masts to right 
the ship. The mizzen-mast broke off below deck 
with all attached, and all above main-mast gone. 
Captain Wilson had his shoulder broken, and dis- 

1 Reprinted in the New York Tribune, Dee. 3, 1880. 



NOBLE DEEDS OF HUMBLE MEN 157 

located his collar-bone; the chief officer and part 
of the crew were disabled. 

"Mrs. Wilson, wife of the captain, who had lived 
on board ship with her husband seven years, saw 
the danger, and although a young woman, with no 
captain or officer to depend on, assumed charge, 
being a good sailor and skillful navigator. The men 
had confidence in her and obeyed her commands, and 
when she said, 'Boys, our lives are in danger; let us 
stick together, and all of us work with a will; I 
will take my husband's place, and take you to some 
port,' the sailors knew our heroine's courage, and 
said, 'Aye, aye; we will obey to a man.' The men 
were divided into four watches; pumps were 
sounded, and the ship was found to be leaking badly. 
"When clear of the wreckage, our heroine shaped 
her course for Bermuda. Having but little sail 
left, and only a foremast complete, she rigged up a 
jurymast. The wind headed her off so that she 
could not make the harbor. Her husband was not 
able to assist her from the effects of his injuries, 
but they held a consultation and deemed it best to 
put the ship before the wind and go to St. Thomas, 
at which place they arrived in safety on March 13, 
being twenty-one days that our heroine had charge 
of the ship and crew. Many heartfelt prayers went 
up to heaven from those grateful men — hard toilers 
of the sea — that land was reached and they had 
been saved through the courage of a woman, 

"On reaching St. Thomas Mrs. Wilson was ad- 
mired by all for her courage and wonderful pres- 
ence of mind. The Sharron was repaired at St. 
Thomas and sailed for Liverpool on May SO. 
Mrs. Wilson was the recipient of an elegant gold 



158 LOVE AND LETTERS 

chain and locket, with a ship in full sail on one 
side, her monogram on the other, presented by the 
English Consul, and many other valuable presents 
from the merchants of St. Thomas. On her de- 
parture flags were hoisted on every flag-staif on 
the island, cannons were fired from the English 
Consul's house and the shipping in port let to the 
breeze all their bunting in honor of our heroine. 
The Sharron arrived in Liverpool June 30, after a 
pleasant trip of thirty days. Mrs. Wilson was 
again received with cheers, and in her honor a 
dinner was given in the North Western Hotel on 
Lime street, where about seventy-five guests sat 
down. After dinner she was presented with a 
purse of gold and numerous presents from mer- 
chants and friends in Liverpool." 

I throw out a suggestion to my fellow authors 
— why not collect these instances of nobleness 
and daring in a book that shall have permanence 
and that shall be an inspiration to all who read 
its pages. A Harvard professor once pressed 
upon my attention the need there was for a 
Biographical Dictionary of Unusual Characters 
— a sympathetic and just dictionary. I think 
the book I suggest would be worth more to the 
world. 

After God, human nature is the most beautiful 
thing of which we have knowledge, and deeds 
such as I have instanced in this brief paper help 
us to believe what it is not always easy to be- 
lieve, that man, with all his sin and shame and 
failure, was still made in the Divine image, and 
retains that image, and can never lose it. 



y 

THE COLLEGE AND BUSINESS LIFE 

"When President Walker, it must be now nearly 
thirty years ago, asked me in common with my col- 
leagues what my notion of a university was, I an- 
swered, 'A university is a place where nothing useful 
is taught; but a university is possible only where 
a man may get his livelihood by digging Sanscrit 
roots.' What I meant was that the highest office 
of the somewhat complex thing so named was to dis- 
tribute the true Bread of Life, the pane d'egli 
angeli, as Dante called it, and to breed an appetite 
for it; but it should also have the means and appli- 
ances for teaching everything, as the mediaeval uni- 
versities aimed to do in their trivium and quad- 
rivium." — Lowell. 

"May God confound thee for thy theory of ir- 
regular verbs !" 

— An Old Grammarian's Curse. 



THE COLLEGE AND BUSINESS LIFE 

THE death of Marshall Field, at the Holland 
House, in the city of New York, January 
16, 1906, raises the question of the utility of 
a college education. Mr. Field was one of the 
greatest among the famous merchants who have 
acquired colossal fortunes and wielded world- 
wide power. He began life in a very humble 
way, and rose to a position of commercial impor- 
tance by the exercise of those common virtues 
which we so easily despise but which are abso- 
lutely essential to success in every worthy enter- 
prise. He was industrious, patient, and faith- 
ful, and to these good qualities he added sound 
judgment and business courage. He was the 
son of a New England farmer, and his early 
days were passed in a little village in Western 
Massachusetts. Some education he had from 
the public school and a local academy, but he 
never prepared for college, and was acquainted 
with only such popular literature as naturally 
attracts the youthful mind whatever may be the 
poverty of its surroundings and the meagreness 
of its advantages. When the lad was seventeen 
years old he commenced his business career in 
a shop at Pittsfield, Mass., where he remained 
four years. At the age of twenty-one he went 
to Chicago, and he there continued in business up 
to the time of his death, which occurred soon after 
he had passed his seventy-first birthday. When 
161 



162 LOVE AND LETTERS 

he was forty-six years old he was able to found 
the Field Columbian Museum with a gift of 
$1,000,000, and to contribute to the University 
of Chicago the princely sum of $450,000. At 
the time of his death he was conducting the 
largest wholesale and retail dry goods business 
in the world. 

The writer of this paper is not inclined toi 
minimize the value of a college education. He 
matriculated in three colleges, from one of which 
he was graduated. Later he prepared for his 
professional career at a theological seminary. 
But his predilections have nothing to do with 
the subject here discussed. Of course men have 
succeeded in all branches of learning and indus- 
try both with and without classical training; but 
the writer believes, from years of observation and 
from extensive reading, that the importance of 
a college education has been greatly exaggerated. 
Presidents of educational institutions have strong 
personal reasons for magnifying the value of a 
curriculum; and with the rapid increase of com- 
petition between colleges those reasons tend to 
become ever more and more personal and strenu- 
ous. 

The college president of fifty years ago was 
selected and appointed because of his intellectual 
and moral fitness for a position which he hon- 
ored more than he was in turn honored by that 
position. He was not, as now, a "hustler," but 
a distinguished scholar and a cultivated gentle- 



COLLEGE AND BUSINESS LIFE 163 

man. The man who in these days would be ac- 
counted successful as the head of a wealthy edu- 
cational institution must know how to extract 
money from the pockets of rich men. The old- 
time president sustained close social and educa- 
tional relationships with the students, but the 
modern president is more at home under the roof 
of a railroad magnate than in the class room. 
His ofSce is in a Pullman car, and he is chiefly con- 
cerned about athletics and regattas and not about 
the branches of learning taught in his institu- 
tion. All this must be taken into account when 
one endeavors to find out the real value of college 
training to our modem life. 

Insignificant colleges with meagre endowments 
and few students are compelled to compete in 
some measure with larger and stronger institu- 
tions of learning. You will find unknown col- 
leges having scarcely the equipment of a high 
school advertising ludicrously bombastic cur- 
ricula. One little college planted in a small 
village out on the prairies announces instruc- 
tion in Sanskrit, Tamil and Syriac languages 
and literatures. It maintains a chair of archae- 
ology and also one of international law. An- 
other college has more than intimated that it is 
ready to name itself after some generous bene- 
factor. There are twenty colleges in the United 
States where there is need for one; and nineteen 
out of the twenty supply little or no service 
beyond that which any high school might render. 



164? LOVE AND LETTERS 

In the writer's opinion much of the money given 
to so-called institutions of learning in this 
country is wasted. 

No one is now confined to the university in his 
search for an education. The world is full of 
books and papers of every description written in 
many languages. In every city, and, indeed, in 
most villages of importance, may be found a 
good library. Thousands of libraries are free 
to all who wish to use them. Even commercial 
life in our modem world has its educational side; 
and ordinary men who do not regard themselves 
as instructed beyond the common requirements 
of their trades, know more about many things of 
a purely literary nature than could have been 
known by accomplished scholars a century ago. 
The college of to-day is only one of many ave- 
nues to an enchanted world of wisdom and 
beauty into which whoever will may enter. 
There are in America hundreds of reading and 
study clubs that are in a very real sense seats 
of learning for their members. The writer had 
upon his desk while preparing this paper the 
printed prospectus of study for one year, put 
out by the Pine Hills Fortnightly Club of Al- 
bany, N. Y. — an association of ladies who meet 
every two weeks during winter months for the 
discussion of literary and other topics in which 
they have interested themselves. The Pine Hills 
Fortnightly Club, it is true, cannot confer de- 
grees, but it can and does confer that for which 
every degree should stand. 



COLLEGE AND BUSINESS LIFE 165 

The real value of a degree is to be found only 
in the education it should imply, and of which it is 
a certification. Apart from the education a de- 
gree is of purely ornamental value. Yet how 
many young men after attending college return 
home with degrees of which they are vainglorious, 
while they never consider the greater value of that 
which they have bartered for such empty and 
trivial honors as are within the gift of a faculty 
or a board of trustees. Thousands of young 
people enter college with generous heart and 
clean life, and return to the early fireside or 
go out into the world ruined in body and mind. 
During all the time the youth was sowing wild 
oats, the much-travelled and well-dined president 
was concerned only about the income of his in- 
stitution. On paper his chair is that of "Mental 
and Moral Philosophy," but in reality it is that 
of "Dollars and Cents." 

It may be argued that professors share with 
the president the responsibility of caring for the 
moral and physical welfare of students. It 
would seem right that those who guide the minds 
and direct the studies of young men should have 
as well some part in forming their characters and 
shaping their destinies. But consider how little 
opposition the faculties of most colleges have 
presented to those brutal atrocities which we call 
*'hazing." A writer in a New York paper 
facetiously suggested that every life insurance 
policy should carry with it an increased premium 
for members of the Freshman class, as the risk 



166 LOVE AND LETTERS 

incurred would seem to be greater than that In- 
curred in the insuring of ordinary men and 
women. It cannot be denied that manslaughter, 
if not murder, has been committed many times 
under the hazing system which presidents and 
professors deplore, but do not even attempt to 
prevent. In the Medical Record for March 
10, 1906, it was stated that a student in a 
medical college in Nebraska was about to sue 
the faculty for $50,000 on the ground that as 
the result of hazing he was rendered incapable 
of pursuing his college course. He was 
dragged, so it was reported, from the classroom 
by Sophomores who intended to throw him into 
a ventilating shaft. He fought and was kicked 
in the back, his spine was injured, and he has 
had to use crutches ever since. Some time ago 
a young man in a Western college was thrown 
into the river and narrowly escaped drowning. 
In another college two young men were exposed 
all night to a winter storm in an open field, 
and one of them died of pneumonia. From an 
Oregon paper under date of February 28, 1909, I 
extract the following statement that speaks for 
itself : 

"Cowering in a padded cell, a young man whose 
parents are pioneer residents in this city shivers at 
the sound of a step in one of the corridors of the 
State Asylum for the Insane, to which he has been 
committed as the result of being hazed by upper 
classmen at the University. He was ducked in an 
icy bath^ and when he emerged from the frigid 



COLLEGE AND BUSINESS LIFE 167 

water his reason had fled. He graduated from the 
High School last June and entered the University 
at the opening of the fall semester. He was a 
brilliant student in the High School, and up to the 
day of the hazing had occupied a prominent posi- 
tion in his class at college. By selling newspapers 
and doing odd jobs out of school hours he saved 
$1,000 with which to put himself through the Uni- 
versity." 

President Roosevelt, after approving an order 
of Colonel Hugh L. Scott, who was at the time 
in charge of the Military Academy at West 
Point, dismissing eight cadets from the Academy 
for hazing, reopened the case and changed the 
sentence of six of the cadets to suspension for 
one year. In less than twelve months from the 
date of the President's interference a cadet on 
sentry duty was attacked by a party of young 
men wearing the uniform of the United States, 
and so severely injured that he was confined for 
some time to the post hospital. This time the 
offenders were, after a fair trial, dismissed from 
the Academy and from the service of their 
country. 

The New York Sun of April 12, 1910, con- 
tained an account of a young lady who as 
a consequence of brutal hazing, initiative to mem- 
bership in a Greek Letter society connected 
with a High School, had to be placed in a sani- 
tarium. She was forced to eat raw oysters 
coated with sugar, drink kerosene, swallow 
macaroni boiled in soapsuds, and then take into 



168 LOVE AND LETTERS 

her stomach highly seasoned catsup and tabasco. 
This monstrous treatment her tormentors ac- 
counted a pleasant diversion. 

A wealthy gentleman once told the writer of 
this paper that he rejoiced greatly when his only 
son decided to leave college and enter commercial 
life. He had been very anxious about his son, 
for he knew the young man carried a revolver 
and intended to use it should the necessity arise. 

When I was a young man, baseball and foot- 
ball were wholesome and innocent recreations 
attended by no great peril to either life or limb, 
but now they are little less than campaigns of 
brutality conducted for money, and often result 
in the serious injury and even death of some of 
the players. Football had to become so out- 
rageous a scandal that good men in all depart- 
ments of life cried out against it in the winter 
of 1905 and 1906, before college authori- 
ties took any steps in the matter, and even then 
they moved with hesitancy and great reluc- 
tance. 

The flying wedge has been in large measure 
stopped, but the abominable mass play continues. 
Notwithstanding every improvement, the list 
of dead and injured for the Season of 1909 was 
the largest for nine years. Thirty boys were 
killed, including eight college players, twenty 
high-school boys, and two members of athletic 
clubs. The injuries were divided among one 
hundred and seventy-one college men, forty 
school players, and five members of athletic 



COLLEGE AND BUSINESS LIFE 169 

clubs. Twenty-five persons suffered internal 
injuries; nineteen had dislocated ankles; nine- 
teen had concussion of the brain; and the same 
number had fractured ribs. Fifteen legs and 
nine arms were broken, while twelve collar bones 
were cracked. There were fifteen cases of torn 
ligaments and thirteen fractured shoulders. 

The gifted author, Walter Pater, was, when 
at school, injured by a playmate who gave him 
a brutal kick. For a number of weeks he was 
confined to his bed, and even to the last day of 
his life the injury was manifest in a peculiar 
defect in his gait. 

It is just that we should say in this connection 
what is certainly true, that the vices, such as 
intemperance, unclean conversation and behav- 
ior, gaming and evils of the kind, are not now 
so prevalent in our colleges as they were a cen- 
tury or more ago. There is an unpublished 
letter bearing the date of June 4, 1767, by 
the Rev. Jonathan Ashley, who was at the time 
pastor of a church in Westfield and also of a 
church in Deerfield, Mass., in which are the fol- 
lowing words that would be beyond all doubt a 
libel were they written of any college to-day : 

"It is probable before this time you have heard 
of another instance of y® great corruption of our 
College. Several of the chief gentlemen's sons in 
the Government have been supposed to have been 
criminally conversant with a lewd woman, whom it 
is said they kept secreted in a chamber in the town 
which was hired by one of the students." 



170 LOVE AND LETTERS 

We do not lay the stress upon personal re- 
ligion that good men in earlier generations 
placed upon piety in college-life, but neverthe'- 
less, our colleges are purer and more temperate. 

What has been said and what remains to be 
said is to no extent the result of any failure 
to appreciate the great good accomplished 
by colleges, much less is it the result of hostility 
to them and their work. The writer of this 
paper has had practical acquaintance with col- 
lege life. He is also acquainted with noble and 
highly educated men who have given many years 
to the training of the young for honorable and 
useful Hves. The writer has in view not the de- 
struction but the reformation of college life. 
He would see abuses corrected and a better state 
of things inaugurated. To that end he not only 
states some of the evils he deplores, but endeavors 
to render more apparent what all admit and 
yet few seriously consider, that the college is 
only a means and never in any sense of the word 
an end. The ablest and best men this world has 
known have, many of them, had no acquaintance 
with college life. Indeed the writer believes he 
can make a list of distinguished men who never 
attended college, that cannot be matched by any 
catalogue of great men whose names are upon 
college rolls. 

Shakspeare began life with no other education 
than that which the Free Grammar School 
at Stratford-upon-Avon was able to give him. 
Bunyan, George Fox, and Spinoza, all of 



COLLEGE AND BUSINESS LIFE 171 

them great men, were self-taught. Jacob 
Boehmen, the German mystic, never at- 
tended a school; all his education he obtained 
by his own unassisted effort. He rose from the 
humblest station in life to be the inspiration of 
Sir Isaac Newton, who was guided to more than 
one of his great discoveries by the study of 
Boehmen's "The Three Principles." William 
Carey without the help of any college became 
one of the most learned of Oriental linguists. 
He translated the Scriptures into Bengali and 
Hindustani, and compiled grammars and dic- 
tionaries in Mahratta, Sanscrit, Punjab, Telugu, 
and Bhatana. Alexander Pope, whose "Essay 
on Man" will live so long as our language en- 
dures, and whose delightful translation of Homer 
can never lose its charm, commenced life with 
no education that would seem to promise such 
results. His later education, which was large, 
was entirely self -acquired. Lord Byron was ed- 
ucated at a day-school in Aberdeen and at a 
school in Harrow, but he never matriculated in 
either Oxford or Cambridge. Robert Bums was 
self-taught. William Falconer, the poet of 
"The Shipwreck" and the compiler of "The 
Nautical Dictionary," was the son of a poor 
and illiterate barber. He led a mariner's life, and 
was lost at sea in the Aurora, of which he was 
the purser. His entire education came from the 
use he made of his spare moments, which were 
spent in reading and study. Hood and Mac- 
kenzie were, neither of them, college-instructed. 



172 LOVE AND LETTERS 

Nelson, the great British admiral, attended the 
High School at Norwich and afterwards went to 
school at North Walsham, but he was not a 
bright scholar. Charles Dickens, after receiving 
a meagre education, studied law, but he never 
had much instruction in the classics. John 
Stuart Mill received a superb education without 
the aid of any college. David Livingstone, the 
distinguished missionary and explorer, and 
Henry Stanley, who found him in the heart of 
Africa, were, neither of them, prepared for the 
work of life in any of the English seats of 
learning. Hugh Miller was a man of large ac- 
quaintance with natural science, but no college 
contributed in any way to his worth and fame. 
John Hunter, the anatomist and surgeon, stood 
at the head of his profession without the aid of 
a college. Robert Stevenson, the builder of 
twenty lighthouses, was self-educated. Charles 
H. Spurgeon's name is known in every land. He 
was in some ways the greatest preacher of his 
age ; for more than forty years he addressed the 
largest congregation in the world, and thou- 
sands of his sermons were every month distrib- 
uted in many lands. But Spurgeon's educational 
advantages were limited. His name cannot 
be found in any catalogue of college-gradu- 
ates. Andrew Carnegie has filled the English- 
speaking world with good libraries, and right it 
is that he should do so, for books were his only 
university. 

Among Americans we name first the greatest 



COLLEGE AND BUSINESS LIFE 173 

of them all, Washington. The capitol of our 
Republic is in the beautiful city that bears his 
name and that is made even more beautiful by 
its association with his glorious life. What col- 
lege would not rejoice to number among its most 
illustrious sons the Father of our Country! 
He was indebted to no college for any part of 
that marvellous equipment of both mind and 
moral nature that made him the supremely great 
man the entire world acknowledges him to have 
been. Next to Washington comes in our early 
history Benjamin Franklin, who acquired his ed- 
ucation in a printing office; an education which 
he enlarged by extensive reading, but which was 
never improved by any college. Andrew Jack- 
son and Millard Fillmore were self-educated men. 
Abraham Lincoln had little schooling apart from 
his knowledge of law. Henry Clay and Stephen 
A. Douglas went to a common school. Horace 
Greeley, the founder of the New York Tribune, 
was, perhaps, the greatest editor this or any 
other country has ever produced, but he was en- 
tirely self-educated. Charles A. Dana, who 
created the New York Sun, and Samuel Bowles 
of the Springfield Republican, were not college 
men. Robert Fulton, John Ericsson, an Ameri- 
can by adoption, and Thomas A. Edison rose to 
their exalted positions by their own unassisted 
effort. Cyrus W. Field, who gave us the sub- 
marine cable uniting two great continents, started 
in life with only a common-school education. 
Washington Irving, the poet Whittier, and some 



174. LOVE AND LETTERS 

of our most successful authors, famous for grace 
of style and charm of personality, never attended 
a coUege. William Cullen Bryant entered 
Williams College, but left at the close of the 
Sophomore year. George Peabody, the distin- 
guished philanthropist, won the love of both 
England and America without a college degree. 
Many distinguished men, as Mr. E. J. Swift 
has pointed out, made a poor record in college. 
To use Mr. Swift's words: 

"The finer individual qualities are often late in 
revealing themselves. It is the older, racial tenden- 
cies that rule in childhood. Irritation at restraint, 
irresponsibility and primitive indolence, are to be 
expected. Some mature slowly and are called stu- 
pid. George Eliot learned to read with difficulty. 
Thorwaldsen, the sculptor, spent three years in one 
class in the village school; Burger, the poet of 
German ballads, required several years to learn the 
Latin forms; and Alfieri, the Italian poet, was dis- 
missed by his teachers, so backward was he. Were 
it necessary, the list might be indefinitely extended 
by adding Newton, Byron, Ibsen, Walter Pater, 
Pierre Curie and others. Sometimes seeming stu- 
pidity is due to interest in subjects outside the lit- 
tle circle round which the tethered children are al- 
lowed to graze. Fulton, Watt and Sir Humphry 
Davy, in early childhood, were already busy with 
experiments which were to be told to children after 
the teachers who called them stupid were forgotten. 
Tolstoy, Goethe and Dean Swift were refused their 
degrees because they failed in their university ex- 
aminations, and, for the same reason, Ferdinand 



COLLEGE AND BUSINESS LIFE 175 

Brunetiere was denied admission to the Ecole Nor- 
male Superieure. At Cambridge, also. Sir William 
Thomson was not a wrangler though one of the 
examiners admitted that the successful competitor 
was not fit to cut pencils for Thomson. When 
asked why he had delayed so long on one of the 
problems which he himself had discovered, Thom- 
son replied that, having forgotten that it was one 
of his own inventions, he had worked it as a wholly 
new problem. Later it was learned that the win- 
ner of the prize wrote the solution from memory. 
Thomson's failure to win the Cambridge honor be- 
cause of the unusual memory of one of his com- 
petitors, illustrates an important class of cases in 
which the examination system completely collapses. 
Justus von Liebig, whose father was compelled to 
remove him from the gymnasium because of his 
wretched work, attributed his failure in the school 
to his utter lack of auditory memory. He could 
remember little that he heard. Yet his teachers 
never discovered this." ^ 

A few years ago the late Francis H. Leggett, 
a wealthy wholesale grocer in the city of New 
York, made public the fact that he had not in 
his entire force of six hundred clerks a single 
college graduate. A reporter for Printer's Ink, 
a paper published at the time by Mr. George P. 
Rowell in the same city, called upon Mr. Leggett 
at his office and obtained from him a statement 
with regard to his experience with college gradu- 
ates. Mr. Leggett said that "through thirty 
years of business life he had endeavored to give 
1 Mr. E. J. Swift in Harper's Magazine. 



176 LOVE AND LETTERS 

college men the preference, believing that a lib- 
eral education ought to be valuable in business." 
After that long and faithful experiment he de- 
cided that graduates of colleges were not as a 
general rule good business men. He found them 
disinclined to begin at the bottom, but without 
the ability to begin elsewhere. They had a con- 
tempt for drudgery. They were unwilling to 
render humble services. In some cases they ac- 
tually thought four years in a literary college 
more than an equivalent for many years of the 
best business experience. 

Mr. Leggett found also that the college man's 
education "had dealt with things so far removed 
from business life and practice that he was 
hardly on a par with a boy from the public 
schools so far as useful knowledge was concerned, 
while he was hampered by whatever foppish illu- 
sions his college life may have given him." Mr. 
Leggett discovered that the college graduate 
knew algebra, but had almost no knowledge of 
arithmetic. He could work out a difficult prob- 
lem if you would give him time, but he could 
not think rapidly when questions in arithmetic 
were up for consideration. "Business," said Mr. 
Leggett, "is founded upon arithmetic — quick 
mental arithmetic that will yield results in a mo- 
ment." Colleges pay no attention to arithmetic 
and the common branches of every-day educa- 
tion. They assume that the three R's were mas- 
tered before the young man entered upon his 
college life. But a man may know Latin and 



COLLEGE AND BUSINESS LIFE 177 

Greek and yet be unable to speak and write his 
own language correctly. In college many things 
are taught that are of no use in business life, 
and the young man entering upon his college 
career knows little of the hard reality of the 
world in which he must live. He knows all that 
there is to be known about a dead language and 
people that passed away long centuries ago, but 
he has scant knowledge of his own country. 
When he leaves college he is too old to learn what 
should have been learned when he was a child. ^ 

"The colleges," said Mr. Leggett, "misedu- 
cate. They teach nothing but book knowledge. 
College professors have been steeped in the col- 
lege traditions." Being further pressed by the 

1 The following excerpt from The Dial, a paper always 
friendly to colleges and college men, throws upon the fail- 
ure of colleges to develop a high moral tone and the abil- 
ity to earn a living in some useful employment, this sad, 
but instructive light: 

"The college-man in the 'bread line' is a spectacle that 
saddens and that moves to reflection. College education 
is more and more striving to coordinate itself with the 
demands of modern life and industry, the sciences are 
ousting the old-fashioned 'humanities,' the principles of 
trade and commerce are taught, and to an increasing ex- 
tent the practical is taking precedence of the ideal. And 
yet we are told by a mission worker in the slums of New 
York (we refer to Mr. E. C. Mercer and his Columbia 
University address on 'College Graduates on the Bowery') 
that one night he counted thirty-nine college men of his 
acquaintance in the Bowery 'bread line,' while another 
investigator found four hundred college men in the Bowery 
in a single night. Under the old educational regime a 
college-bred pauper was an almost unheard-of anomaly. 
Can it be that, after all, the most practical things are in 
some danger of proving the most useless?" 



178 LOVE AND LETTERS 

reporter who was himself in nowise hampered by 
any tradition, and whose business proficiency 
was the result of his own industry, and not of 
any college training, Mr. Leggett said, "What 
colleges teach is not only valueless, but actually 
harmful to the youth who intends entering com- 
mercial life. The college graduate, thrown into 
the business world, knows less than the boy who 
is forced to leave school and earn his living at 
fifteen; while he has a false estimate of his 
ability that makes him disdainful of the work 
that would be the means of teaching him 
business." 

Mr. Leggett's statement is worthy of con- 
sideration. It is that of a successful business 
man who has had large experience. The con- 
clusion to be drawn from it is that classical col- 
leges are not helps but hindrances to young men 
who wish to enter business life. They train 
their minds in the direction of professional life, 
and create tastes and inclinations at variance 
with the hard and matter-of-fact duties and re- 
quirements of the life they elect to lead. Business 
colleges are in large measure free from these 
objections, but there are among such institutions 
none that take rank with the best classical col- 
leges, unless medical, legal and theological col- 
leges and seminaries are to be classed with busi- 
ness schools. Scientific and mining schools, the 
Polytechnic Institute at Troy, N. Y., the Mili- 
tary Academy at West Point, and the Naval 



COLLEGE AND BUSINESS LIFE 179 

Academy at Annapolis, do not come under Mr. 
Leggett's strictures. 

Under the heading "A Severe Indictment," the 
Educational Review reprinted from the Argonaut 
(San Francisco) in the autumn of 1910 an appar- 
ently frank and yet severe criticism of the col- 
lege graduate. The charge was one of down- 
right incapacity. It may be the arraignment 
was too sweeping, but its perfect agreement with 
the statement of Mr. Leggett's experience is 
certainly very striking: 

" 'In recruiting its service, says the Argonaut, 
speaking of its own experience, 'trial has again and 
again been made of the college-bred youth, but 
never with any approach to success. We have never 
yet been able to find a college-bred youth, without 
a long subsequent practical drill, who could write 
clean English, or who could even write a hand 
which the printer could read. Not one of those 
from Frank Pixley down, whose work in the Ar- 
gonaut lias been an element in its character and in- 
fluence, has been a man of college breeding. This 
remark applies to other publications of the country 
representative of journalism in its higher rank. It 
is only a few months ago that there was assembled 
at a dinner table in the Century Club at New York 
a little group representing the very highest forces 
in American journalism — including the editor of 
Harper's Weekly, the then editor of the Century, 
and others of equal note — ^when, through a chance 
inquiry, it developed that only one present was a 
college-bred man/ " 



180 LOVE AND LETTERS 

Students in American colleges, unlike those 
in English institutions of learning, seem to take 
little interest in the responsibilities of public life 
and of the government under which they live. 
They are more concerned about dead nations 
than about the living one with which they are 
themselves connected. The professors themselves 
incline in the same direction; they seldom take 
any direct part in the political life around them. 
Yet surely to all who live under the Stars and 
Stripes the United States should be more in- 
teresting and more important than are the 
Greece and Rome of earlier days. The writer 
does not forget that Ex-President Roosevelt and 
President Taft are college men, and that there 
are other representatives of college life high up 
in public confidence and honor, but these are 
rather the exception than the rule. 

It is too much to ask of any young man in 
the ordinary walks of life and with ordinary 
mental endowments, that he pass through school, 
after that spend four years in a classical col- 
lege, and then take two or three years in a legal 
or medical college before he begins to acquire 
the real training for work which is in a large 
measure the experience which comes of the work 
itself. The man begins work too late. His 
tastes and opinions are already fixed, and they 
are not fixed in the line of his occupation. His 
mind has lost much of its elasticity. What fol- 
lows .?* This, that our colleges should teach 
young men the things which are useful in busi- 



COLLEGE AND BUSINESS LIFE 181 

ness as well as the things which are essential to 
professional life. A university is such in name 
only that has not in its equipment a good com- 
mercial college. Harvard University should be 
able to furnish a suitable education for both a 
Ralph Waldo Emerson and a Marshall Field — 
the one a prince in the realm of letters, and the 
other a prince equally as great in that of com- 
mercial achievement. We are not of Horace 
Greeley's opinion, "of aU horned cattle, deliver 
me from the college graduate," but we are of 
Mr. Leggett's opinion that the young man's 
training should have some definite relation to his 
life-work. 

There was in the old-time colleges a serious 
fault in large measure corrected by our modem 
elective system of education. The college of 
fifty years or more ago was a huge impersonal 
machine into which minds of every kind, with 
no thought whatever of individual peculiarities, 
were ruthlessly cast, to be turned out, so far as 
possible, alike in every respect. The one end 
always in view was the creation of Latin and 
Greek scholars. The mind that could not be 
classically educated was accounted stupid. Cul- 
tivated mediocrity was the order of the day, and 
whatever remotely resembled genius was vigor- 
ously discouraged. Balzac was driven from 
several schools because his wonderful mind could 
not be run through the educational hopper of 
that time. His masters, one and all, set him 
down for a fool. We now know that the fools 



182 LOVE AND LETTERS 

were in the professorial chairs, and that a young 
man of great ability was despised and thrust 
out because public instructors had not the keen- 
ness of mental vision to discover his real worth. 
Read "Louis Lambert," and see how bitter was 
Balzac's struggle with a number of incompetent 
teachers. The experience of the young man 
Coleridge was not wholly unlike that of the youth 
who was to become one of the greatest of French 
novelists. Pestalozzi, when a boy, was named 
"the dunce" because he could not spell. His 
teachers could spell correctly, and great was their 
influence in their educational circles, but now, 
while all the world knows of Pestalozzi, who can 
tell us anything about his teachers ! Charles Dar- 
win was afraid to send his son to school. He 
wanted the child's mind developed along the line 
of his natural abilities. He distrusted the popu- 
lar educational theories. He was right, and our 
old system of instruction was all wrong. For 
every class above the Freshman a full elective 
course should be prepared. It has been truly 
said, "The elective system is nothing more than 
a recognition of the duty of the university to 
offer instruction in many fields." Latin and 
Greek are good, but they are no better in their 
places than are French and German in theirs. 

The literatures of Rome and Greece can never 
lose their charm, but there is no reason why mod- 
em languages should not rank with the languages 
of Plato and Virgil. 

Culture is of many kinds. AH over the civil- 



COLLEGE AND BUSINESS LIFE 183 

ized world new fields of knowledge and new av- 
enues of usefulness invite the thoughts and 
energies of man. It is a hard and hurtful ex- 
perience to have to spend the precious years of 
youth in acquiring a peculiar kind of knowledge 
not wanted in the actual business of life, and, per- 
haps, distasteful to the learner. I have seen 
"finishing schools" drill in music young ladies 
who not only had no delight in the kind of music 
that was taught them, but were repelled by every 
sort of music worth knowing. It was once be- 
lieved that no one could be a lady who was not 
able to slaughter at public functions and "pink 
teas" the great masters of immortal song. The 
day of that kind of folly is passing away. The 
masters will escape, and the public will be spared 
many miserable hours of torture by the rising 
of the sun of common-sense upon the darkness 
of "finishing schools." Some of the ablest 
preachers know little Greek and less Hebrew. 
Not a few of our best lawyers were educated at 
the common school, and prepared for a profes- 
sional career in the office of a good attorney. 
Not all distinguished surgeons have wasted time 
over conic sections. He who knows well some 
useful thing and turns his knowledge to account 
in helpful words and deeds may be described as 
leading a successful life. Such a life should be 
recognized as noble and sufficient. The office of 
an educational institution is to help the indi- 
vidual to be of service to his race. Such insti- 
tutions are means to a common end, but they are 



184 LOVE AND LETTERS 

never an end in themselves. Education is educa- 
tion still, even though secured extra muros. Mr. 
Crane tells us, in his book on Education, that 
knowledge is the knowing of important things. 
But what one man finds important another thinks 
well nigh worthless. Some distinguish between 
the useful and the beautiful, accounting the one 
more important than the other. But whatever 
kind of knowledge enriches a man's mind becomes 
a part of that man's education. It does not fol- 
low that a craftsman is an ignorant man because 
he does not know the things that a philosopher 
should understand. In the end no line separates 
the useful from the beautiful. Every kind of 
useful knowledge has its own beauty, and every 
beautiful thing is useful. 



OLD AGE 

MaTjyv ap* 61 yipovrvi evxovrai Oaveiv, 
yrjpa<i ^eyovres koX fiaKpbv xpoJ'ov fitov. 
'^Hv 8' eyyvi eXOrj ddvaro's, ov8els /SovAcrai 
6vr]<TKCLV, TO yrjpas 8* ovkIt* €(tt' avToh fiapv. 

"Honorable age is not that which standeth in 
length of time, nor that is measured by number of 
years: but Wisdom is the grey hair unto men, and 
an unspotted life is old age." 

— Wisdom, iv, 9' 



OLD AGE 

WHEN the hills, touched with frost in the 
early autumn, put on their beautiful 
robes, and all the forests are clothed in scarlet 
and gold, there is an attraction as strong and 
as gentle as any subtle influence that haunts the 
opening of spring-time or pervades the slum- 
berous summer, heavy with heat and resplendent 
with canopies of living green. To know Nature 
at her best one must find her early and leave her 
late. Of the little villages in New England what 
can one know who has not seen in the month of 
May the apple-blossoms white like snow upon the 
overburdened boughs, and watched in the dreamy 
mists of Indian-summer the yellow sunsets fade 
into the purple shadows of October and Novem- 
ber twilights. Every season has its peculiar 
beauty, and of each the words of an American 
poet are true: 

"To one who in the love of Nature 
Holds communion with her visible forms. 
She speaks a various language." 

When the mind can comprehend that language 
and understand its message, the roaring winds of 
mid-winter have as sweet a music when forests 
bow them to the snowy earth and tall pines are 
splintered by the blast, as have the gentler voices 
of the spring-time in "the leafy month of June." 
The truth in Nature is the same truth we find in 
187 



188 LOVE AND LETTERS 

human life. Youth has its own peculiar attrac- 
tion; so has manhood, stout-hearted, self-confi- 
dent, and robust; and none the less has slowly 
advancing age. That the last of life is in no 
way behind the beginning in rich compensation, 
the gentle Wordsworth knew right well when, by 
the quiet shores of Rydal Lake, he wrote those 
beautiful lines so often quoted, and yet of which 
we never weary: 

"Old age serene and bright. 
And lovely as a Lapland night. 
Shall lead thee to thy grave." 

Lines like these bring to mind the Bible phrase, 
"A good old age," and they suggest as well the 
consoling picture of the aged patriarch leaning 
upon his staff in the opening of his tent amid 
the soft shadows of the Syrian landscape, wor- 
shiping God after the manner of his ancestors 
with the simple faith of those early days. We 
admire Shakspeare's description of old age, but 
never for so much as a moment is it to be com- 
pared with the brief and exquisite story of the 
closing scene in the life of Jacob as we have it 
in the ancient book of Genesis: "Then when 
Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, 
he gathered up his feet into the bed, and yielded 
up the ghost, and was gathered unto his people," 
How simple, tender, and strong is the narrative. 
It is not true, as the English dramatist would have 
us believe, that for the most part life is but a 
stale and unprofitable thing; that men foUow 



OLD AGE 189 

only the bubble reputation ; and that at last there 
remains for all one melancholy end, to drop 
through a few years of senile folly into unre- 
corded graves: 

"The lean and slippered pantaloon, 
With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side; 
His youthful hose well saved, a world too wide 
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice. 
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes 
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, 
That ends this strange, eventful history. 
Is second childishness and mere oblivion; 
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything." 

We turn from this much admired, but sad and 
one-sided picture of decay, to contemplate the 
devout Simeon who waited in Jerusalem for 
the consolation of Israel. It was revealed unto 
the aged saint that he should not see death before 
he had seen the Lord's Christ. And he, waiting, 
not for "second childishness and mere oblivion," 
but for the fulfilment of the Divine Promise and 
that blessed consolation of Israel upon which his 
heart fed through the long expectancy of the 
years, came into the Temple, "and when the 
parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him 
after the custom of the law, then took he him 
up in his arms, and blessed God, and said, 'Lord, 
now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace ac- 
cording to thy word; for mine eyes have seen 
thy salvation.' " Longfellow has, in his lovely 
romance of "Hyperion," these wise and tender 
words : 



190 LOVE AND LETTERS 

"For my part, I grow happier as I grow older. 
When I compare my sensations and enjoyments 
now with what they were ten years ago, the com- 
parison is vastly in favor of the present. Much 
of the fever and fretfulness of life are over. The 
world and I look each other more calmly in the 
face. My mind is more self-possessed. It has 
done me good to be somewhat parched by the heat 
and drenched by the rain of life." 

Thus, no doubt, by nature as well as by re- 
ligious agencies were the mind and heart of the 
venerable man prepared for the wonderful vision 
of the consolation of Israel that came to him in 
the aftermath, when the parching heat and drench- 
ing rain of life had crowned the hill-sides with a 
harvest of hope. And as the little child Jesus 
nestled confidingly in his loving arms, and from 
under the dark lashes of those Judean eyes the 
"Light of the world" shone tenderly and sweetly 
upon his believing heart, must not all his life 
have seemed a blessed preparation for so heav- 
enly a disclosure.? To him the discipline of the 
years must in the end have covered themselves 
with the mantle of thanksgiving. The discord- 
ant voices of passion had long been hushed, and 
the feverish dreams of ambition were no more. 
Instead of enthusiasm he had experience, hardest 
of all things to acquire. To him the spiritual 
world had become real. 

Such has been in some measure the experience 
of earnest men in all ages and in all lands. The 
mirage glitters only in the light and heat of mid- 



OLD AGE 191 

day; the approach of evening dispels the illu- 
sion. So when the shadows fall and life draws 
near its end, some things are more distinctly per- 
ceived. There is a certain ease and mellowness 
of companionship in riper years. The horizon 
is broader, the sympathies are more general, and 
the feeling and purpose of the man more catho- 
lic. Anxiety for victory has given place to re- 
gard for truth. A distinguished writer has said 
that no one can understand Shakspeare before 
the age of forty has been reached. Up to that 
time it is quite possible to admire the dramatist, 
but no one under forty can comprehend his mean- 
ing or enter into his spirit. I verily believe there 
are some things not in literature alone or in 
philosophy, but in life and the spiritual domain 
that can never be learned from books and colleges, 
and that only the years can impart to the willing 
mind. 

The approach of age should always bring with 
it moral rest, which is only another name for 
peace. Positive happiness is not absolutely essen- 
tial; a man may forego this, and yet lead a 
strong, noble, and beautiful life. Some of the 
best characters in history have known much of 
sorrow, and have been themselves ripened into 
what they were by that very sorrow. I suppose 
it is the increasing desire and need for rest of 
both body and mind, and for peace of heart which 
should come with the years, that makes Words- 
worth, so little cared for by the young, a favor- 
ite poet with elderly persons, and especially with 



192 LOVE AND LETTERS 

the contemplative. Watson has very much the 
same thought in his lovely poem, "Wordsworth's 
Grave" — a poem which has immortalized his 
name with the English-speaking world: 

"Not Milton's keen, translunar music thine; 

Not Shakspeare's cloudless, boundless human view ; 
Not Shelley's flush of rose on peaks divine; 

Nor yet the wizard twilight Coleridge knew. 

What hadst thou that could make so large amends 
For all thou hadst not and thy peers possessed, 

Motion and fire, swift means to radiant ends? 
Thou hadst, for weary feet, the gift of rest. 

From Shelley's dazzling glow or thunderous haze. 
From Byron's tempest-anger, tempest-mirth, 

Men turned to thee and found — not blast and blaze. 
Tumult of tottering heavens, but peace on earth. 

Not peace that grows by Lethe, scentless flower. 
There in white langours to decline and cease; 

But peace, whose names are also rapture, power. 
Clear sight, and love: for these are parts of 
peace." 

What old age shall be must in considerable 
measure depend upon the use one makes of early 
years and mid-life. When a man is old his mind 
reverts to early days. Old habits of thought 
will not relinquish their hold. The man of 
eighty forgets what happened yesterday, but he 
recalls his childhood. How often in the hour of 
death, when the mind is clouded and the physical 



OLD AGE 193 

faculties impaired, memory leaps the chasm of the 
years, and the old man is again surrounded by 
the scenes of his youth. We need not fear and 
we should not repine. Rather should we be 
grateful for what we have enjoyed, and for that 
Infinite Mercy in which we shall do well to con- 
fide. 

"As the bird trims her to the gale, 
I trim myself to the storm of time; 
I man the rudder, reef the sail. 
Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime: 
'Lowly faithful, banish fear. 
Right onward drive unharmed; 
The port, well worth the cruise, is near. 
And every wave is charmed.' " 

Montaigne would have it that we are old at 
forty ; and he cites the case of the younger Cato, 
who said to those who would prevent him from 
taking what little he thought was left of his 
life, "Am I now of an age to be reproached that 
I go out of the world too soon?" Cato was only 
forty-eight, and yet he thought himself superan- 
nuated. There is no standard by which we may 
measure the years. One man is old early in life, 
and another is loaded with fruit far into the win- 
ter. The Scripture measure is three-score-and-ten, 
but in these times, because our lives are so well pro- 
tected, we reach a much greater age; and some 
are well and active in both body and mind after 
ninety and even more years. I had a delightful 
conversation with Julia Ward Howe when she 



194} LOVE AND LETTERS 

was not far from ninety, and, though she was 
reminiscent, she was still full of hope and enthu- 
siasm. She lived to be a little over ninety-one, 
and to the end she possessed a clear mind. She 
was full of joy and of gladness in life long after 
physical infirmity had rendered active participa- 
tion in the world of affairs impossible. She said, 
"People wonder why I don't die ; but how can 
I, when I have eight great-grandchildren to see 
started in life ?" 

Some are ready for the work of life at a very 
early age, but not all are so favored. It was 
Montaigne's opinion that "our souls are adult 
at twenty as much as they are ever like to be, 
and as capable then as ever." Alexander was 
but thirty-three when he "wept for want of more 
worlds to conquer" ; Hannibal was only thirty- 
six when he gained the battle of Cannas, and 
threatened even the Imperial City ; Charlemagne 
was master of France and of a part of Germany 
at twenty-nine ; Raphael was not thirty when they 
called him the "divine" Raphael; Calvin was im- 
mortal before he was twenty-eight; Pope trans- 
lated the Iliad before he had reached his 
twenty-fifth year; Isaac Newton was at the sum- 
mit of his fame at thirty ; Harvey was not thirty- 
four when he discovered the circulation of the 
blood; Byron had written his greatest poems 
before he was thirty-four, and he was in his grave 
at thirty-seven; Mozart died at thirty-five; John 
Jay was Chief Justice of New York at thirty-two. 
But though youth is full of great achievement, 



OLD AGE 195 

age is not, therefore, wholly wanting in deeds 
of worth and renown; and in counsel and advice 
it greatly surpasses not only youth but mid-life 
as well. 

Old age was not a sad or a melancholy thing 
to Mrs. Barbauld. She had lost most of the 
friends of her early life, and she has left it on 
record that she was lonely. After the death of 
Mrs. Taylor, whom she loved most of all, she 
consented to leave her solitary home, and to live 
the remaining years of her life with an adopted 
son. But death came to her before she could 
make the change. She died sitting quietly in her 
chair. Her literary life ended only with her 
natural life. She was over seventy when she 
wrote the little poem called "Octogenary Reflec- 
tions." It is now among the forgotten frag- 
ments of the world's good literature, but once it 
was well known and greatly admired. She is 
remembered and will always be remembered by 
those beautiful lines which she called "Life," and 
which are to be found in nearly every anthology : 

"Life, we've been long together, 
Through pleasant and through cloudy weather: 
'Tis hard to part when friends are dear; 
Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear; 
Then steal away, give little warning. 
Choose thine own time. 

Say not good-night, but in some brighter clime. 
Bid me good-morning." 

Wordsworth used often to repeat those lines ; 
Tennyson called them "sweet verses"; and 



196 LOVE AND LETTERS 

Madame d'Arblay in her old age told Crabb 
Robinson that every night when she went to rest 
she said those lines over to herself. 

To the last all these whose names we have 
mentioned delighted themselves in noble associa- 
tions, took pleasure in the beauty of song and in 
the common gladness of those who surrounded 
them, and were keenly alive to such opportunities 
for service as came to them even in old age. 
Thus to grow old is truly beautiful. It is to 
age as the trees age, putting on autumnal splen- 
dors with the approach of frost and snow. 
Anna Letitia Barbauld knew what it was to be 
lonely, for she had not only parted in the course 
of nature from early friends, but, being a woman 
of letters, her companionships even in mid-life 
must have been restricted. She tells us that she 
was lonely, but nevertheless we see in all we know 
of her life that no part of it was without some 
measure of satisfaction. The Psalmist, who 
thought that old age was only another name for 
three-score-and-ten, writing of it said, "Our 
strength is labor and sorrow." No doubt the 
labor and sorrow are often found, but we 
do well to put far from us so much of both as 
we can. If the labor must be, let it be with as 
little friction as possible. We may not live to 
be as old as Henry Jenkins, who died at the ripe 
age of one hundred and sixty-nine years and 
who was a fisherman angling in the brooks and 
water-courses of his dearly loved England even 
when he was a hundred and forty years old. Be 



OLD AGE 197 

we ever so fond of the gentle but cruel sport, 
it is not at all likely we shall have anything re- 
sembling his skill. He made artificial flies the 
year before he died, without spectacles and with- 
out the assistance of others. No doubt Izaak 
Walton attributed the old angler's long life to 
out-door occupations, and especially to angling. 
Walton said, "God never did make a more calm, 
quiet, innocent recreation than angling," but I 
should like to know the opinion of the trout and 
of the other fish that he and Jenkins and men 
of their way of thinking captured. Byron took 
a very different view of the matter when he wrote : 

*'And angling, too, that solitary vice. 
Whatever Izaak Walton sings or says; 
The quaint, old, cruel coxcomb, in his gullet 
Should have a hook, and a small trout to pull 
it. 

Age will come to all of us if we live long 
enough to experience its discomforts, but that 
period need not be, and certainly it should not 
be, one of distress if we have health and are lifted 
above the burden of want. Wise were the words 
of Sir Theodore Martin spoken by him in the 
Inaugural Address which he delivered when he 
became rector of St. Andrew's University: 

"It is not years that make age. Frivolous pur- 
suits, base passions unsubdued, narrow selfishness, 
vacuity of mind, life with sordid aims, or no aim 
at all — these are the things that bring age upon 
the soul. Healthful tastes, an open eye for what 



198 LOVE AND LETTERS 

is beautiful and good in nature and in man, a happy 
remembrance of youthful pleasures, a mind never 
without some active interest or pursuit — these are 
the things that carry on the feelings of youth even 
into years when the body may have lost most of 
its comeliness and its force." 

Sir Theodore Martin knew whereof he spoke, for 
when he uttered those wise and wholesome words 
he was himself in his ninetieth year. When he 
was a very old man he was still strong of mind 
and body — stronger, beyond all question, than 
many a younger man who listened to his dis- 
course. 

How about tobacco .f* Well, there are in our 
world as many opinions with regard to the use 
of "the weed" as there are men to entertain those 
opinions. Where there is so little agreement I 
would not be over-confident, and yet I have an 
opinion the nature of which will be understood 
when I express a willingness to discuss it over a 
fragrant cigar with anyone who does not agree 
with me. Tobacco used with moderation will, I 
think, injure but few, while it is a very great 
comfort to a large number of men. Used with- 
out moderation it is in nearly every case an in- 
jurious agent. I smoke as a general thing three 
cigars a day, one after lunch and two in the 
evening. I have never discovered that my three 
cigars a day have ever hurt me in any way. 

Everyone knows the charming lines written by 
the old English poet Greorge Wisher, who flour- 
ished in the time of James I. Wisher was a 



OLD AGE 199 

kind and friendly man, and withal a man of cour- 
age who espoused the cause of the common people. 
After the Restoration our poet found himself in 
duress for three long years. I wonder much if 
in all that time he had sweet companionship in 
those delicate clouds of tranquillizing smoke he 
celebrated for us all so well in his delightful 
song: 

"Tobacco's but an Indian weed, 
Grows green at morn, cut down at eve; 

It shows our decay, 

We are but clay — 
Think of this when you smoke tobacco. 

The pipe that is so lily-white. 
Wherein, so many take delight. 

Is broke with a touch. 

Men are but such — 
Think of this when you smoke tobacco. 

The pipe that is so foul within 

Shows how man's soul is stained with sin; 

And then, the fire 

It doth require! 
Think of this when you smoke tobacco. 

The ashes that are left behind 
Do serve to keep us all in mind 

That unto dust 

Return we must — 
Think of this when you smoke tobaoco. 



200 LOVE AND LETTERS 

The smoke that doth on high ascend 
Shows how man's life must have an end. 

The vapor's gone^ 

Man's life is flown — 
Think of this when you smoke tobacco." 

At a banquet of dealers in tobacco in St. Louis 
some years ago Col. IngersoU made one of 
the most eloquent of all his eloquent addresses. 
With these words he brought the address to a 
close, and I think they are words that we should 
never allow time to erase from the literature of 
our land: 

"Four centuries ago, Columbus, the adventurous, 
on the blessed island of Cuba, saw happy people 
who rolled leaves between their lips. Above their 
heads were little clouds of smoke. Their faces 
were serene, and in their eyes was the autumnal 
heaven of contentment. These people were kind, 
innocent, gentle and loving. The climate of Cuba 
is the friendship of the earth and the air, and of 
this climate the sacred leaves were born — leaves that 
breed in the mind of him who uses them the cloud- 
less happy days in which they grew. These leaves 
make friends and celebrate with gentle rites the 
vows of peace. They have given consolation to 
the world. They are the friend of the imprisoned, 
of the exile, of workers in mines, of fellers of trees, 
of sailors on the deep sea. They are the givers of 
strength and calm to the vexed and weary minds of 
those who build with thought and rear the temples 
of the soul. They tell of rest and peace. They 
smooth the wrinkled brows of care, drive fear and 
misshapen dread from out the mind and fill the 



OLD AGE 201 

heart with hope and rest. Within their magic warp 
and woof some potent spell imprisoned lies that, 
when released by fire, does softly steal within the 
fortress of the brain and bind in sleep the captured 
sentiments of care and grief. These leaves are the 
friends of the fireside and their smoke-like incense 
rises from myriads of happy homes. Cuba is the 
smile of the sea." 

It is said that Sir Isaac Newton was smoking 
in his garden at Woolsthorpe when the apple 
fell. Dr. Parr was never without his pipe, which 
was half -filled with salt. He even took his pipe 
into drawing-rooms, where he smoked with a 
good-natured and vulgar vanity. Charles Lamb, 
Carlyle, and Tennyson were inveterate smokers. 
General Grant smoked the strongest cigars he 
could obtain. Tobacco-smoking is a social en- 
joyment, while the use of the opium-pipe is quite 
the reverse. Several smokers of opium may re- 
cline in the same room, but each smoker is wholly 
concerned with himself. A little conversation 
there may be at first, but soon each smoker draws 
himself like a snail into his own shell, and all is 
silence and repose. The little conversation at 
the beginning becomes, so soon as the drug takes 
effect, sententious and laconic ; and the choice bits 
of foolish wisdom that are passed from smoker 
to smoker would not be bad literature for Judge 
or Puck. 

Some kind of a stimulant man must have. It 
is well, I think, to recognize that fact, and to 
set about finding him something less harmful than 



202 LOVE AND LETTERS 

opium or gin. Napoleon, like Dr. Johnson, was 
a confirmed tea drinker. So was Gladstone, who 
confessed that "he drank more tea between mid- 
night and daybreak than any other member of 
the House of Commons, and that the strongest 
brew of it never interfered with his sleep." The 
Dietetic and Hygienic Gazette has this interest- 
ing excerpt: 

"The dish of tea was one of the most important 
factors in Johnson's life. Proficiency in the gentle 
art of tea brewing was regarded by him as an 
essential attribute of the perfect woman^ and there 
can be no doubt that his female friends (and their 
name was legion) did their best to gratify his amia- 
ble weakness. 

"Richard Cumberland tells us that his inordinate 
demands for his favorite beverage were occasionally 
difficult to comply with. On Sir Joshua Reynolds 
reminding him that he had already consumed eleven 
cups, he replied: 'Sir, I did not count your glasses 
of wine; why should you number my cups of tea?* 
adding laughingly and in perfect good humor: 
'Sir, I should have released our hostess from any 
further trouble, but you have reminded me that I 
want one more cup to make up the dozen, and I 
must request Mrs. Cumberland to round up my 
score.' 

"When he saw the complacency with which the 
lady of the house obeyed his behests he said cheer- 
ily: 'Madam, I must tell you, for your comfort, 
you have escaped much better than a certain lady 
did a while ago, upon whose patience I intruded 
greatly more than I have yours. She asked me 



OLD AGE 203 

for no other purpose than to make a zany of me 
and set me gabbing to a parcel of people I knew 
nothing of; so, madam, I had my revenge on her, 
for I swallowed five and twenty cups of her tea.* 

"Cumberland declared that his wife would gladly 
have made tea for Johnson 'as long as the New 
River could have supplied her with water,' for it 
was then, and then only, he was seen at his happiest 
moment." 

Tea is a stimulant, and like coffee and cocoa, 
has a three-fold effect — on the circulation, on 
the spinal cord, and on the brain. It increases 
the flow of blood through the brain cells and 
supplies them with extra nutriment. This again 
results in quickened thought. If by the use of 
this stimulant thought could be turned on when 
needed and could be again turned off when no 
longer required, tea would be an ideal drink. 
Unfortunately, intellectual activity is kept up 
when the tired brain requires sleep, and thus it 
comes to pass that large quantities of Dr. John- 
son's strong brew may prove even more harmful 
than tobacco or spirits when used intemperately. 
Tea, coffee, and cocoa promote a feeling of well- 
being which is certainly most delightful, and it 
is not surprising that exhausted brain-workers 
have been tempted to use them immoderately. 
In preparing tea the leaves should never be boiled 
or stewed. The boiling water should in every 
case be poured on the leaves, and after standing 
for a few minutes should be again poured off. 
Tea should not be taken at the same meal with 



S04 LOVE AND LETTERS 

flesh-meat, for it toughens the fibre of the meat 
and so renders it more or less indigestible. Bishop 
Berkeley, the distinguished philosopher whose 
theory of the nonexistence of matter has never 
been demolished, however much the experience 
of man may incline to a different explanation of 
the universe, was even more fond of tea than 
was Dr. Johnson. He expired drinking his fa- 
vorite beverage. One evening he and his family 
were sitting and drinking tea together, — ^he on 
one side of the fire, and his wife on the other, 
and his daughter making the tea at a little round 
table just behind him. She had given him one 
cup, which he had drunk. She had poured out an- 
other which he left standing some time. "Fa- 
ther," she asked, "will you not drink your tea?" 
Upon his making no answer, she stooped forward 
and looked at him, and found that he was dead. 
That was certainly a most beautiful way of dy- 
ing — quietly, with neither pain nor sad farewell, 
encircled by the loved ones, and with the hand 
resting upon a cup of refreshing beverage. 
Berkeley directed in his will that his body should 
be kept above ground more than five days, and 
until it became offensive. It was to remain un- 
disturbed and covered by the same bedclothes, in 
the same bed, the head raised upon pillows. 
Henry Ward Beecher was fond of strong coffee. 
The poet Schiller found himself better able to 
compose when he had before him on the table a 
few partly decayed apples ; and when he could 
not have these he wanted coffee or champagne. 



OLD AGE 205 

The elder Kean had with him at the theatre 
brandy and beef -tea which he drank between the 
acts ; he adapted, so it is said, his dinner to the 
part he must play. Mrs. Jordan took calf's- 
foot- jelly dissolved in sherry. Gladstone when 
he did not drink tea took egg beaten up in sherry. 
Nearly every man uses in one way or another 
tobacco. And what a blessing the weed is to 
thousands of our race. Listen to BosweU as he 
sings the praise of the various kinds of snuff: 

"O snufF! our fashionable end and aim, 
Strasburghj Rappee, Dutch, Scotch, whate'er thy 

name; 
Powder celestial! quintessence divine! 
New joys entrance my soul, while thou art mine. 
By thee assisted, ladies kill the day,. 
And breathe their scandal freely o'er their tea; 
Not less they prize thy virtues when in bed; 
One pinch of thee revives the vapored head. 
Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, 
Glows in the stars, and tickles in the sneeze." 

It was tobacco and not literature that made the 
name of John Nicot famous. His two books and 
the first French Dictionary, of which he was the 
compiler, could, never have saved from oblivion 
his worthy name. It was his introduction of the 
plant into France, and the adoption of his name 
as that of the oil contained in the leaves of the 
plant, that made Nicot's name familiar wherever 
the word "nicotine" is used. 

No doubt many users of tobacco have injured 



206 LOVE AND LETTERS 

their health and shortened their lives by immod- 
erate use of the plant ; but surely the abuse of a 
thing furnishes no valid argmnent against its 
reasonable enjoyment. Nicot introduced some 
measure of contentment into the pleasant land of 
France when he introduced to its citizens the weed 
he loved so well. Moderately used, tobacco 
soothes the nerves and promotes peace. I do 
not know who wrote the famous "Recipe for Con- 
tent," but surely it is well worth remembering, 
and Nicot may be regarded as the first mixer 
of its wholesome ingredients: 

"Into a neat little room, all cozy and tight. 
Put two large glasses of Southern light; 
And an ounce of tobacco and a good easy chair. 
Then thicken with volumes all spicy and rare. 
Flavor with prints in the usual way 
And serve to the taste, on a dull rainy day." 

Tobacco, so beloved by the old, is itself a much 
older plant than most of those who smoke and 
chew its leaves suppose. We may laugh if we 
will at the grotesque conceit that Noah was in- 
toxicated with tobacco and not with wine, but 
nevertheless it seems to have something of the 
solemnity of a Greek Church "tradition." Dr. 
Yates, simple-minded man, tells us that he saw a 
picture of a smoking party in one of the ancient 
Egyptian tombs. The author of a little book 
on tobacco, published in London in 1859, admits 
that Yates may have seen the picture of a smok- 
ing party which he describes, but he slyly insin- 



OLD AGE 207 

uates that the original draughtsman was beyond 
all doubt not an ancient, but a modem Egyptian 
- — some mischievous urchin of recent times who, 
tampering in sport with a real antique, "builded 
better than he knew," and cheated an unsuspect- 
ing archaeologist. It has also been suggested 
that the old Egyptian glass-blowers may be re- 
sponsible for this most absurd of blunders. 

We do not now use very much snuff, though it is 
still manufactured for royalty abroad and for 
Italian ecclesiastics. But everywhere men, and 
some women as well, smoke. Alcohol is even more 
common than tobacco. It has filled the world 
with its sorrow and gladness, and I fear that the 
sorrow is much in excess of the gladness. Dis- 
raeli consumed large quantities of champagne 
jelly. Thomas Paine was too fond of spirits for 
his own good, and so also was President Pierce, 
who was a very excellent man nevertheless. Poe, 
it is whispered, sometimes trifled with opium, not 
satisfied with things to drink. 

About alcoholic beverages there is, despite the 
tragedy that is never far away, much of romance 
and good-fellowship. But the Indian weed seems 
to eclipse all other stimulants in the delightful 
literature that gathers about it. And it adds 
something to its praise that there cleaves to its 
fragrant leaves so little of painful tragedy. 

As we advance in life time seems to fly with an 
ever increasing speed. And it is well that it is 
so. Our happiest years, which are usually those 
of early life, linger as if loath to depart ; but 



208 LOVE AND LETTERS 

our more helpless years, those of "the lean and 
slippered pantaloon," appear as anxious to be 
gone as does life itself, so like from first to last 
"an empty dream." Even when old age has be- 
come a great burden its years still appear swift: 

"The more we live, more brief appear 
Our life's succeeding stages, 
A day to childhood seems a year, 
And years like passing ages. 

Heaven gives our years of fading strength 

Indemnifying fleetness; 
And those of youth a seeming length 

Proportioned to their sweetness." 

When the end comes there often comes with 
it an imperative demand for rest. So urgent is 
the demand in some cases that the aged sufferer 
is unable to resist its pressure, and in a moment 
of weakness, it may be, he takes his own life. 
Lecky, in his "Map of Life," calls attention to a 
touching epitaph which he saw in a German 
churchyard : 

"I will arise, O Christ, when Thou callest me; but 
oh! let me rest awhile, for I am very weary." 

If we live long enough it is not unlikely that we 
shall even wish for death. There is an old Irish 
legend that illustrates that fact: In a certain 
lake in Munster, it is said, there were two islands ; 
into the first death could never enter, but age and 
sickness, and the weariness of life, and parox- 



OLD AGE 209 

ysms of fearful suffering were all known there, 
and they did their work till the inhabitants, tired 
of their immortality, learned to look upon the 
opposite island as upon a haven of repose. 
They launched their barks upon its gloomy wa- 
ters; they touched its shore, and they were at 
rest. 

With Plotinus, I thank God that my soul is 
not imprisoned within an immortal body, for in 
that case I should know a new mortality more to 
be feared than the one of which I now have 
knowledge. From every agony possible to man 
death furnishes a sure escape. A deathless body 
would mean living death. And yet men would 
close and fasten as with bolts of steel the one 
door without which hope were impossible. They 
would inscribe over the cradle of every infant 
the words that Dante saw over the Place of Doom. 
I could not wish to live were it not permitted me 
to die. 

Yet nevertheless there is a sense in which body 
and mind alike are under the dominion of death. 
Auguste Comte said in a moment of depression, 
"Death governs the living." He may not have 
really believed the sovereignty of death so vast, 
but that was what he said, and in a very impor- 
tant sense the saying is true. Through the long 
years we are engaged in warding off death. 
Thousands of men are in bondage all their days 
through fear of death; and the very persons 
who reprove them for this fear, and who en- 
deavor to rescue them from its baneful influence. 



210 LOVE AND LETTERS 

are themselves In many cases in bondage to the 
same dark dread. Porta was a distinguished 
surgeon at the University of Pavia. When, as 
sometimes happened, a patient died on the oper- 
ating table through the depressing Influence of 
fear. Porta would, In a transport of rage, throw 
the Instruments to the floor, shouting, "Cowards 
die from fear!" Was the surgeon himself then 
so brave a man? Ah, he also had his phobia. 
He knew moments of the deepest depression. 
Yet still it is true that great age often brings 
its own sweet release, and the fear dies before 
the coming of death Itself. And sometimes the 
martial spirit common In youth returns late In 
life, and the familiar lines of Browning become 
an experience : 

"Fear death? — ^to feel the fog in my throat, 
The mist in my face. 
When the snows begin, and the blasts denote 
I am Hearing the place. 

I was ever a fighter, so — one fight more. 

The best and the last! 
I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, 
and forbore, 
And bade me creep past. 
No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my 
peers. 
The heroes of old." 

Dr. Crothers, a distinguished physician who 
has given the best years of his life to the study 



OLD AGE ail 

of the psychological features of disease and also 
to the cure of the drug habit, has propounded 
a theory not wholly new, but still unlike any other 
in the results which must follow its acceptance. 
He wrote in a medical journal: "There are 
many reasons for believing that we carry around 
with us great reserve powers and unknown ener- 
gies which are seldom used, and that in old age 
appeal to these powers may give a certain vigor 
entirely unexpected which lengthens out life and 
practically overcomes disease." These "reserve 
powers and unknown energies" are, it is to be 
supposed, different from what is known as the 
subconscious self, but concerning that matter it 
is not necessary that we should speculate. Dr. 
Crothers tells us that did men but realize the hid- 
den powers they have always with them the "deep- 
est despondency would disappear from the 
continuous desire and effort to rise above it." 
In other words, this appeal may flood old age 
with a joy in life when, under ordinary circum- 
stances and in most men, it has departed with the 
vigor of early days. This theory, which is not 
without some evidence to sustain it, is yet new, 
and must await the results of further investiga- 
tion; but it certainly presents an alluring hope. 
Think what it really means to flood the sterile 
places of old age with the revitalizing tides of 
joy and expectancy, and to exterminate the rank 
and noxious weeds of despondency, doubt, and 
suspicion. We plant flowers over graves, but 
still the graves remain. Is this new theory an- 



212 LOVE AND LETTERS 

other planting of flowers over graves, or is there 
here an actual revitalizing and a resurrection of 
the man? Time only can answer that question. 
But still, one way or the other, old age, as has 
been shown, need not be utterly sad and lonely. 
Very much depends upon temperament, which 
is but another name for natural heritage, and 
over that we have no control. All we can do 
with it is to accept of it in whatever form it 
comes, and so to make of it the best use we can. 

Much of the loneliness of age is occasioned by 
the death of early friends and companions. The 
man who survives these in a certain sense survives 
himself. New friends are not easily made after 
one has reached the age of fifty. And with the 
loneliness of declining years there comes a con- 
sciousness of the approach of a loneliness even 
deeper than any of which we have made mention 
— the loneliness of death. 

"A lonely hour is on its way to each. 
To all; for death knows no companionship." 

All the supreme places and conditions of life 
are lonely. Thousands of men may die in battle 
within a very circumscribed area and at the same 
time, yet to each man death comes as a solitary 
event. Our associations are superficial when com- 
pared with our isolations. Since, then, we cannot 
escape the great solitudes of our existence, is it 
not well that we give some time to their consid- 
eration? We may, if we will, look Destiny in 
the face, and thus acquaint ourselves in advance 



OLD AGE 213 

with the "lonely hour," and we may thus in some 
measure disarm it of its terrors. Every man 
should learn to be alone without discomfort to 
himself. Gibbon wrote, "On the approach of 
spring I withdraw without reluctance from the 
noisy and extensive scene of crowds without com- 
pany and dissipation without pleasure." We 
need not tarry for the spring. Each day brings 
with it its own opportunity : 

"Sometime between the dawn and dark. 

Go thou, O friend, apart, 
That a cool drop of heaven's dew 

May fall into thy heart. 
Thus, with a spirit soothed and cured 

Of restlessness and pain, 
Thou mayest, nerved with force divine, 

Take up thy work again." 

There have been many definitions of old age, 
but perhaps the best of them all is that which 
represents it as the period in life when a man 
no longer adjusts himself to his environment. 
The difficulty with this definition is that it is, 
under certain limitations, as applicable to infancy 
as to old age. And still further, sickness as 
well as age may render the adjustment impossible. 
According to Dr. George M. Beard ("Legal Re- 
sponsibility in Old Age") the productive periods 
in man's life grade themselves thus: 

The Brazen decade is between 20 and 30. 
The Golden decade is between 30 and 4*0. 
The Silver decade is between 40 and 50. 



214. LOVE AND LETTERS 

The Iron decade is between 50 and 60. 
The Tin decade is between 60 and 70. 
The Wooden decade is between 70 and 80. 

The best and most productive period, it would 
appear, is the fifteen years between the ages of 
thirty and forty-five. And in that period the 
best two years, which must of course be as well 
the best in a man's entire life, are the two be- 
tween thirty-eight and forty. There are many 
exceptions to the rule, but take the world and 
the ages into account, and I think the general 
results of investigation will indicate the period 
of time named as usually the best for work of 
whatever kind in the life of man. The procre- 
ative function in woman ceases between forty and 
fifty, which is just the period when the physical 
and mental powers begin to decline. Thus it 
comes to pass that we are spared the misfortune 
of an earth largely peopled by underlings. 

In 1888 the following table of brain-workers 
was prepared. The men named were at the time, 
most of them, living, and possessed of the vigor 
of their faculties. The table is useful as show- 
ing, what most students of biometry know, that 
brain-work is favorable to longevity: 

George Bancroft, Historian , ,. 87 

F. A. P. Barnard, College President 79 

J. S. Blackie, Scholar 79 

John Bright, Statesman 77 

Robert Browning, Poet 76 

Robert E. Bunsen, Chemist 77 



OLD AGE 215 

M. E. Chevreul, Chemist 102 

J. D. Dana, Geologist 75 

Jefferson Davis, Statesman 80 

Ignatius DoUinger, Theologian 89 

John Ericsson, Engineer 85 

Octave Feuillet, Author 76 

David D. Field, Lawyer 83 

W. E. Gladstone, Statesman. 79 

Jules Grevy, Statesman . 81 

Oliver W. Hohnes, Poet 79 

Leo XIIL, Pope 78 

H. F. Manning, Cardinal 80 

J. Louis Meissonier, Painter 76 

James McCosh, Metaphysician 77 

J. H. Newman, Cardinal 87 

Richard Owen, Anatomist 84? 

Andrew P. Peabody, Clergyman 77 

J. L. A. Quatref ages. Naturalist 78 

Alfred Tennyson, Poet ..>... 79 

Ambroise Thomas, Composer. 77 

Guiseppe Verdi, Composer 74 

Thomas E. Vermilye, Clergyman 85 

R. W. Weir, Painter. 85 

J. G. Whittier, Poet 84 

T. D. Woolsey, Publicist 87 

Dr. Nascher, a New York physician, tells us 
that while the debility of old age cannot be pre- 
vented, some of its effects may be relieved, the 
mental attitude may be improved, and the vigor 
of earlier days may be in some slight degree re- 
stored. The cause of senile debility is to be found 



216 LOVE AND LETTERS 

in the waste of muscle, cartilage, bone, and nerve 
tissue consequent on impaired metabolism. 
Whatever benefits the mental condition improves 
the debility. Growing old is in great measure 
due to mental influences, and yet those influences 
are in turn largely due to the physical changes 
named. Dr. Nascher, with no thought of es- 
thetics, recommends phosphorus and arsenic, and 
would introduce various hygienic and dietetic 
measures. These would, no doubt, in some de- 
gree lessen the waste of tissue that brings about 
the decrepitude of old age. Small doses of 
morphine are followed by marked improvement, 
and where age is far advanced the drug habit 
need give no concern. An intellectual life wards 
ofi^ in some measure the approach of old age, as 
has been shown not only in the table just given, 
but in many other tables, and very forcibly in 
the following synopsis: 

AVERAGE LENGTH OF LIFE 

Years. 

Poets Q6 

Painters and sculptors 66 

Musicians 62 

Novelists 67 

Superior officers 71 

Philosophers 65 

Historians 73 

Inventors 72 

Political agitators 69 

Statesmen 71 



OLD AGE 217 

The four most important natural indications 
of long life are: 1. Descent, at least on one 
side, from long-lived parents. 2. Serenity and 
cheerfulness of disposition, with which is asso- 
ciated contentment. 3. A well-proportioned 
physical frame. 4*. The habit of sleeping long 
and soundly. 

The physical features which indicate a long 
life are large heart, lungs, digestive organs, and 
brain; a long body with comparatively short 
limbs ; a long hand with a somewhat heavy palm 
and short fingers ; a deeply seated brain, as indi- 
cated by a low orifice to the ear; blue hazel 
or brown hazel eyes; large, open, and free nos- 
trils, which indicate large lungs. 

Women live longer than men, and the mar- 
ried out-live the single. The longer life of 
woman is, no doubt, due in great measure to her 
domestic retirement. The coming woman, with 
her new public and political duties, will find the 
emancipation of her sex attended with a de- 
creasing length in life. A happy marriage pro- 
motes cheerfulness and contentment, both of 
which favor longevity. 

The following rules, it seems to the writer, 
lived up to, will greatly favor longevity: 

1. Sleep eight hours. 

2. Sleep on your right side. 

3. Have the window of your bedroom open 
most of the night. 

4. Have your bedstead slightly removed from 
the wall. 



218 LOVE AND LETTERS 

5. Let your bath in the morning be at the 
temperature of the body. 

6. Eat sparingly of meat. 

7. Observe moderation in the use of alcohol. 

8. Exercise in the open air every day. 

9. Allow no animals to sleep in your bed- 
room. 

10. See that you have some variety in your 
life. 

11. Take for yourself a sufficient number of 
holidays. 

12. Limit your ambition. 

13. Drink freely of pure cool water, but avoid 
iced-water. 

14. Restrain your passions. 

Old age may be divested of many of its dis- 
abilities, but it can never be other than lonely. 
The old man in out-living his friends has, as 
has been already said, out-lived himself. He 
finds it hard to affiliate with the young, and the 
men of his own years are gone from him for- 
ever. His mind, soon wearied by even trivial 
things, wearies as well of the isolation, and in 
many cases death itself becomes even attractive. 
Thus in his swan-song a poet complains that 
Death has entirely forgotten him : 

"Go to your nests, rooks, in the windy trees. 
And vex not me with your ill-omened caw; 
I am too old to live beneath Fear's law; 
Hopes fever me no longer nor doubts freeze. 
Half I forget what makes the blackbird sing 
So loud in spring. 



OLD AGE 219 

The earth grows old around me; planets wane; 

April's green glamour is spread out in vain; 

The rose sends nets of fragrance from her tree. 

But in her webs of beauty takes not me; 

Out of the road I never turn my feet 

For search of moonwort or of meadowsweet. 

The sea sings loud for youth. I hear it moan, 
Counting its rocky ramparts stone by stone, 
And all the green-haired people of the waves 
They do but make wild music over graves. 
The graves of broken ships and drowned men. 
And cities that the sea has ta'en again. 

I hate the gulls and terns that dip and cry 
About the white cliffs, along the sundering sea. 
Or I should hate, if hate had not passed by. 
Even as love has, and forgotten me. 
Time has outdistanced my slow feet — behold, 
I have outlingered Death. I cannot die; 
I am too old." 



VII 

CULTURE 

"The Middle Ages had their wars and agonies, 
but also intense delights. Their gold was dashed 
with blood, but ours is sprinkled with dust. Their 
life was inwoven with white and purple, ours is one 
seamless stuff of brown." 

— Ruskin. 

"Live with the gods." 

— Marcus Aurelius. 



CULTURE 

THE word "culture" is not easily defined. 
Webster is more witty than wise when he 
tells us that "culture is the act of cultivating." 
He reminds us of the physician who wa^ sure 
that death was "substantially the loss of life." 
We are told that culture means production, but 
the words are not synonymous, for it is possible 
to produce the fruit of folly and ignorance. 
We are again Informed that culture means ad- 
vancement, and yet one may advance in the 
wrong direction. Principal Sharp says that 
*'culture is the educing or drawing out of what 
is potential in man." It Is the training of his 
faculties and energies, and the directing of them 
to their true ends. For all practical purposes 
Principal Sharp's definition is entirely satisfac- 
tory, unless it be objected that it is in reality 
a description rather than a definition. 

The word training covers all the distance be- 
tween a civilized man and his savage ancestors. 
In a state of nature we possess in embryo those 
faculties of mind and powers of body which, 
when trained, become the creators and exponents 
of civilization. There were potentially in our 
savage ancestors, as they ran naked through the 
forests, the English Magna Charta, the com- 
monly received translation of the New Testa- 
ment, the plays of Shakspeare, and the Ameri- 
can Declaration of Independence. There is in 
223 



224* LOVE AND LETTERS 

our human nature a wonderful wealth of intel- 
lectual material, irrespective of everything re- 
sembling spiritual experience. 

We must distinguish between culture and mere 
polish. The two are often confounded, the one 
with the other, and yet they are entirely differ- 
ent things. Polish is superficial, that is to say, 
it has to do with the surface only, while culture 
is a change in quality. The distinction is clear 
enough in matters connected with social life. 
It requires more than a French finishing school 
to make a lady, and more than a gold-rimmed 
eye-glass to make a gentleman. One is neither 
lady nor gentleman so long as the moral nature 
remains uncultivated. As well might an uncul- 
tivated patch of ground be taken for a garden. 
A gentleman is a gentleman at heart or he is not 
one in any sense of the word. A true lady is 
gentle, modest, conciliatory, cordial, thoughtful 
of others, kind to her servants, and charitable 
in her judgments. But in all this there is some- 
thing more than the developing of mere natural 
resources. Doubtless the possibilities of an oak 
are inclosed by the shell of the acorn, but light, 
air, and moisture have entered into the account. 
The light of sun and star, summer-rain and 
winter-frost, and all the juices of the earth are 
in that tree. A thousand outside influences 
unite with inward possibilities to make us what we 
are. Man is in a certain sense an epitome of the 
universe, for all its forces and substances enter 
into the mystery of his being. He is one with 



CULTURE a26 

these. The old English poet Herbert knew 
this when he wrote of man : 

"He is in little all the sphere. 
Herbs gladly cure our flesh, because that they 
Find their acquaintance there." 

We are from the intellectual point of view 
Svhat we are able to perceive. The Spirit said 
to boastful Faust, "Thou'rt like the spirit whom 
thou can'st comprehend — not me!" and Faust 
replied : 

"Not thee? 
Whom then? 
I, God's own image ! 
And not rank with thee!" 

But the Spirit condescended to no answer, 
and simply vanished. We are what we are able 
to perceive and comprehend. And it should be 
added that training is essential to the develop- 
ment of perception. The sailor will with un- 
assisted eye derive more knowledge of a passing 
ship far away than a landsman can gather with a 
powerful glass. Where we see only confusion 
the artist perceives exquisite beauty. A woman 
visiting the studio of Turner looked intently at 
one of his pictures and said, "Mr. Turner, I 
go often to the place you have painted, but never 
do I see what you represent upon that canvas." 
"Ah, Madam," replied the artist, "don't you 
wish you could see it?" You turn to a noble 
poem, every line of which throbs with beauty, 



226 LOVE AND LETTERS 

but the poet found his splendor in the dust. 
You walked directly over it without discovering 
what the poet saw under his feet and all about 
him. Beauty is everywhere, but there must be 
a trained and educated eye with which to dis- 
cover it. 

"The poem hangs on the berry-bush. 
When comes the poet's eye, 
And the street is one long masquerade 
When Shakspeare passes by." 

A man like Emerson lives in a realm of beauti- 
ful perceptions: 

"Let me go where'er I will 
I hear a sky-born music still: 
It sounds from all things old. 
It sounds from all things young. 
From all that's fair, from all that's foul. 
Peals out a cheerful song. 
It is not only in the rose. 
It is not only in the bird, 
Not only where the rainbow glows. 
Nor in the song of woman heard. 
But in the darkest, meanest things 
There alway, alway something sings. 

'Tis not in the high stars alone. 
Nor in the cups of budding flowers. 
Nor in the redbreast's mellow tone, 
Nor in the bow that smiles in showers. 
But in the mud and scum of things 
There alway, alway something sings." 



CULTURE 2Sn 

You think you hear music, but perhaps what 
you hear with the dull, untrained ear is little 
better than jangling discord as compared with 
the delicious melody the true musician hears. 
Sailor, artist, poet, musician are all products of 
different kinds of culture. We may add the 
saint if we will, for to this same process of train- 
ing may be referred all his fineness of moral per- 
ception, strength against temptation, holiness of 
disposition, and loftiness of purpose. Behind 
the beauty of his life, and inseparably associated 
with it, is the austere reality of duty. No man 
ever dreamed himself into either earthly or 
heavenly wisdom. No man ever wished himself 
into a character. If one would have these he 
must endure hardness; and to the hardness there 
must be added continuance in welldoing. There 
is in morals a certain "squatter sovereignty" 
whereby continued exercise of a grace or virtue 
renders that grace or virtue the possession of the 
man who exercises it. Shakspeare makes one 
of his characters advise that if one be without 
a virtue he assume it. Therein lies a world of 
philosophy. Assume the virtue long enough, 
and moral "squatter sovereignty" perfects the 
title. True culture has in it a certain element 
of hardness, to which is added continuance. The 
Sacred Writer puts it in a line: "Having done 
all, stand." 

It should be said that the higher forms of 
culture imply sympathy. Such culture is to be 
found only where advanced civilization prevails. 



228 LOVE AND LETTERS 

"Every man for himself" is the motto of savage 
hf e ; "United we stand" is that of an enlightened 
community. "No man liveth unto himself, and 
no man dieth unto himself." We are one race, 
and have common interests. True culture is 
altruistic. And so it comes to pass that in the 
end it is one with civilization. 

The literatures of ancient- Greece and Rome 
are so fragmentary and, to us, so unreal that 
there is now difficulty in believing they were 
once adequate for the intellectual expression of 
a living people. Our literature will suffer no 
such change. The printing-press imparts to 
even the' most Avorthless book a stamp of immor- 
tality. Of all competitions the most strenuous 
is that of authorship. Merchants compete with 
traders of their own time only, while the author 
must compete with not only the. living but with 
the dead of all lands and ages. Every new 
century increases the emulation, and but for the 
art of printing not one of the thousands of 
modem writers could hope for even the most tran- 
sitory remembrance. Here is our great ad- 
vantage over the ancients. The press so in- 
creases the number of copies and so distributes 
them that no misfortune will ever be able to 
entirely destroy the book that has once been pub- 
lished. Countless works known to men and 
women in ancient Greece have either wholly or 
partly disappeared. Where are the lost plays of 
^schylus and Sophocles.? Every copy of a 
book was laboriously written out by a human 



CULTURE 229 

hand, and of course there could be but few copies 
of any single book — ^there were never enough of 
these to insure immortality. Time and disaster 
smote them, and they perished. It is very dif- 
ferent with us. The press gives to even the 
meanest production of the human mind its im- 
primature; and to the "Let it be printed!" is 
added the sure and impressive word, "Forever." 
The printing press is quite as likely to prove 
a foe as to show itself a friend of culture. Even 
as Nature favors alike the trained and experi- 
enced physician and the callow empiric, making 
no distinction between them, even so does the 
impartial press give to both good and bad in 
literature the stamp of permanence. It is true 
that the popularity of both will not be the same, 
and that the classic will be at all times more or 
less obtainable while other and less important 
works will sink into obscurity, but Gutemberg's 
discovery gives and will continue to give to all 
published books something resembling an even 
chance. 

Leibnitz thought that the press, by preserving 
so many unworthy books, would become in time 
an evil rather than a benefit to the world. He 
believed that the press, by bestowing an indis- 
criminate immortality upon modem books, would 
in a large measure destroy the worth of that 
immortality. The Water Poet tells us that the 
greatest names in English literature owe their 
continued existence to paper and type, and that 
for want of these the great names of ancient 



230 LOVE AND LETTERS 

times have either perished or suffered some 
ecHpse. Thus our old Water Poet sings, and 
that we have his song is due for the most part 
to the advantage which printing gives : 

"In paper many a Poet now survives, 
Or else their lines had perished with their lives. 
Old Chaucer, Gower, and Sir Thomas More, 
Sir Philip Sidney who the laurel wore; 
Spenser and Shakspeare did in art excel. 
Sir Edward Dyer, Greene, Nash, Daniel, 
Silvester, Beaumont, Sir John Harrington; 
Forgetfulness their works would over-run, 
But that in Paper they immortally 
Do live in spite of Death, and cannot die. 

And many there are living at this day 
Which do in Paper their true worth display. 
As Davis, Drayton, and the learned Donne, 
Johnson and Chapman, Marston, Middleton, 
With Rowley, Fletcher, Wither, Massinger, 
Heywood, and all the rest where'er they are. 
Must say their lines but for the paper sheet 
Had scarcely ground whereon to set their feet." 

Greece and Italy were in. ancient times the 
true home of culture. Other countries, as Egypt 
and the lands of the far East, developed some- 
thing of plastic and literary art, though nothing 
that might be compared with the artistic evolu- 
tion of Athens and Rome. Greece is no longer 
the seat of learning, nor is she closely connected 
with fine artistic advancement; but Italy remains 
to-day as of old the center of a world-culture 



CULTURE 231 

that draws to itself from all over the earth the 
lovers of whatever is noble and beautiful in feel- 
ing and expression. An American poet, Mr. 
Robert Underwood Johnson, has voiced this de- 
light of the cultivated mind in all that modem 
as well as ancient Italy means to those who un- 
derstand and love beauty for its own sake: 

"Oh, to be kin to Keats as urn with urn 

Shares the same Roman earth ! — to sleep, apart. 
Near to the bloom that once was Shelley's heart. 
Where bees, like lingering lovers, re-return; 
Where the proud pyramid. 
To brighter glory bid. 
Gives Cestius his longed-for fame, marking im- 
mortal Art. 

Or, in loved Florence, to repose beside 
Our trinity of singers! Fame enough 
To neighbor lordly Landor, noble Clough, 
And her, our later sibyl, sorrow-eyed. 
Oh, tell me — not their arts 
But their Italian hearts 
Won for their dust that narrow oval, than the 
world more wide ! 

So might I lie where Browning should have lain. 

My 'Italy' for all the world to read. 
Like his on the palazzo. For thy pain. 
In losing from thy rosary that bead, 
England accords thee room 
Around his minster tomb — 
A province conquered of thy soul, and not an 
Arab slain!" 



VIII 

VICISTI GALILEE 

"Julian alone attempted to upbuild pagan society 
on strange lines of ethics, philosophy, and mysti- 
cism. A narrow-visioned Don Quixote, he strove 
after an impossible goal. But like Don Quixote, 
he, too, was a noble character appealing to the 
imagination, and it is fitting that his dying voice (so 
the legend goes) called forth 'the sun, the sun!' — 
a cry to the ideal." 

— George S. Hellman. 

"Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean, 
The world has grown gray at thy breath." 

• — Swinburne. 



VICISTI GALILEE 

THE genuineness of the traditional last 
words of the Roman Emperor, Flavins 
Claudius Julian, may be doubted. The Apos- 
tate, for so they named him when he renounced 
the poor figment of Christianity which prevailed 
in his day, is reported to have exclaimed in the 
moment of death, "Vicisti, Galilaee!" — Thou hast 
conquered, O Galilean! These traditional last 
words rest mainly upon the authority of Theo- 
doretus (111:25), though reenforced by the less 
important authority of other writers. The cry 
of despair attributed to the dying monarch lends 
itself with wonderful facility to well nigh every 
kind of artistic and literary eflFect. Swinburne's 
"Last Oracle" turns it to marvellous account: 

"Dark the shrine and dumb the fount of song thence 
welling. 
Save for words more sad than tears of blood that 
said: 
'Tell the king, on earth has fallen the glorious 
dwelling, 
And the watersprings that spake are drenched 
and dead. 
Not a cell is left the God, no roof, no cover; 

In his hand the prophet Laurel flowers no more.' 
And the great king's high sad heart, thy true last 
lover, 
Felt thine answer pierce and cleave it to the core. 
And he bowed down his hopeless head 
In the drift of the wild world's tide, 



236 LOVE AND LETTERS 

And dying, 'Thou hast conquered/ he said, 
'Galilean/ he said it, and died." 

The over-dramatic effect of the "Vicisti, 
Galilaee!" awakens something more than mere 
suspicion that after all the Emperor may never 
have said anything of the kind ; and yet, true or 
false, the picturesqueness of the phrase disarms 
adverse criticism. The other last words, though 
quite as venerable, and far more likely to be 
authentic, have never prevailed, and never can 
prevail against the dramatic force and poetic 
beauty of the "Vicisti, Galilee!" The other 
last words, tame and commonplace, but probably 
genuine, are, *'Sun, thou hast betrayed me!" 
When Julian turned from following the Galilean 
he became a worshiper of the sun. The sun 
was the source of all terrestrial life. From it 
sprang beauty and gladness. It smiled upon 
the sleeping earth, and the light of day filled the 
heavens with glory. Field and forest were astir, 
the flowers exhaled their sweetest odors, and man, 
his every step quickening with fresh energy, 
went forth to achieve new conquests, and to de- 
light himself with increased possessions. Primi- 
tive idolatry in every land turned its face heaven- 
ward, and with reverential posture and praying 
lips saluted sun, moon, and stars. Gibbon 
quotes Julian's philosophic discourse with his 
friends during his last hours, and represents the 
Emperor as reaffirming his belief in the doctrines 
of Pythagoras and Plato. He said that his soul 



VICISTI GALLILtEE 237 

would soon be united with the Divine Substance 
of the Universe. He still had faith in the Sun 
though he reproached that deity with having de- 
ceived him. 

The scene that followed the fatal wounding 
of the Emperor, and the sudden destruction of 
his every hope and plan touching the restoration 
of Paganism, must have been more than simply 
impressive. Ammianus Marcellinus, who was 
with the army at the time, and should, therefore, 
have had exact knowledge of the last moments of 
Julian, likens the scene to that which Plato 
draws of the death of Socrates. It must, how- 
ever, be remembered that the historian's predi- 
lections were strongly on the side of the Em- 
peror. 

Julian's childhood was passed under influences 
nominally religious but in reality selfish, ambi- 
tious, and cruel. Yet his early education in- 
cluded a knowledge of the Sacred Scriptures and 
of what may be described as the technique of 
public worship and church-government. The 
Christian Faith as held by Constantius II. was 
neither an attractive nor a helpful system of 
religious belief. On the contrary, it was brutal 
and savage — not much better than the Paganism 
it had supplanted. Constantius was himself far 
from being a brilliant exemplar of the virtues 
upon which he insisted. His mind was ill-formed 
and stupid, and, as such minds usually are, stub- 
born and intractable. He was lacking in rev- 
erence for sacred things. Without authority 



238 LOVE AND LETTERS 

and with neither moral nor intellectual fitness he 
aspired to be both leader and absolute ruler of 
the early church. Without troubling himself 
about councils he exalted and deposed whomsoever 
he would, requiring in all things complete and 
unhesitating submission to his autocratic will. 
He was one of the earliest of a long line of spir- 
itual bosses, ruling with narrow-minded severity 
the humiliated consciences of his fellow-men. 
He called himself "Lord of the Universe," and 
for the old title, "His Majesty," or its equivalent, 
he substituted the meaningless, and it may be 
blasphemous, appellation of "His Eternity." 
Under his misrule violence and greed were every- 
where. 

It is not surprising that under such influence 
and surrounded by such disorder, Julian early 
doubted the truth of a faith that, calling itself 
after the name of Christ, was yet represented 
by advocates and followers who made no secret 
of their shameful and vicious living. There is 
some reason for believing that he was not wholly 
sincere when under such tutelage as has been de- 
scribed, he made profession of his faith in the 
religion of the Galilean. Why should he have 
been sincere.? On every side were dishonesty 
and all kinds of wrong^doing. The most sacred 
things were despised and venerable usages were 
disregarded. His attendance upon divine serv- 
ice, his zeal in the study of the ApostoHc Writ- 
ings and in the erecting of shrines to the martyr 
Mamas, and his performance of certain clerical 



VICISTI GALLIL^E 239 

functions connected with the public worship of 
his day, may all have been due, as Theodoret 
believes, to a slavish fear of Constantius. His 
very life depended upon his espousal of the new 
faith, and every selfish interest inclined him in 
the same direction. There were cogent reasons 
why he should inwardly despise the faith he 
had publicly espoused — reasons growing out of 
certain peculiarities of his temperament. He 
had inherited from a cultivated and pleasure- 
loving mother a fondness for the beautiful in 
art and letters. Guided by the refined taste of 
his congenial and faithful instructor, the aged 
Mardonius, he had learned to understand and 
enjoy the superb literature of ancient Pagan 
Greece. He sat with delight at the feet of 
Homer and Hesiod. To him *Iliad' and 'Odyssey' 
were more than epic poems; they were religious 
literature, alive with the charm and glory of a 
mythology that made an almost resistless appeal 
to his imagination. His heart was with the old 
order of things. Temples and statues were a 
perpetual delight, as were also theatre and 
Academy. Poets and philosophers were his 
companions and friends. With absorbed atten- 
tion he heard the rhapsodists recite to the tinkle 
of the harp the marvellous story of Troy. The 
pictures of Xenxis and the statues of Parxi- 
teles charmed him. The Odes of Pindar and the 
pages of Herodotus were forever sounding in his 
ear. Is it, then, astonishing that the young 
Juhan did not in his heart love a faith that op- 



24Q LOVE AND LETTERS 

posed all these, and that sought to substitute for 
the spell of their enchantment a rude and fanatical 
priesthood? 

The first indication of revolt against the barren 
and desolate thing misnamed Christianity which 
he had outwardly, and it may be under pressure, 
embraced, is to be found in the heed which he 
gave to the predictions of the soothsayer of 
Nicomedia. The young man, unable to explain 
those predictions upon natural grounds, was in- 
clined to view them as of divine origin. To him 
they appeared quite as wonderful and more im- 
pressive than the miracles recorded in the New 
Testament. There is mention in history of a 
secret conference with certain Platonic philoso- 
phers who claimed to be able to introduce the 
human soul into the immediate presence of the 
gods. These philosophers were men of large 
acquaintance with the world and with human 
nature. In the unfolding of their philosophical 
tenets they surrounded themselves with an elegant 
and refined mystery peculiarly fascinating to 
the poetical imagination and cultivated tastes 
of Julian. They flattered him with their rever- 
ential courtesy and by the kindly and gracious 
way in which they fostered his genius, which 
they were not slow in discovering. They en- 
couraged him to seek the assistance of Edesius 
of Pergamus, who was at that time the leader 
of their school. Edesius conducted the youth 
to the Temple of Hecate, the mysterious divinity 
whom the ancients sometimes identified with 



VICISTI GALLILiEE 241 

Diana of "the moonlight splendor of the night," 
and sometimes with Proserpine the goddess of 
darkness, secrecy, and witchcraft who visited the 
earth at night. Her approach was made known 
by the barking of dogs, those animals being able 
to see her form before it became visible to men. 
The marvellous disclosures of that Temple were 
more than Julian could withstand. There are 
reasons for believing that he visited the adjoin- 
ing shrine of Apollo, but of that we have no 
positive information. In the Temple of Hecate, 
a pinch of sacred incense having been burned to 
purify the reason, there appeared in flame and 
smoke what Julian seems to have received with 
neither question nor doubt as the Divine Pres- 
ence. What was it that Julian saw, and that so 
greatly influenced his after life? Various con- 
jectures have been offered, but among them that 
of a purely subjective or mental image resulting 
from the influence of narcotic vapors mingling 
with the fragrant smoke of burning incense has 
of late years secured the largest favor. Virgil's 
description of the Pythoness under the power 
of inspiration shows how completely the human 
mind could at times come under the control of the 
"divine fury" known to ancient Roman worship. 

"Her color changed; her face was not the same 
And hollow groans from her deep spirit came. 
Her hair stood up; convulsive rage possessed 
Her trembling limbs, and heaved her laboring 

breast. 
Greater than human kind she seemed to look^ 



U2 LOVE AND LETTERS 

And with an accent more than mortal spoke, 
Her staring eyes with sparkling fury roll, 
When all the god came rushing on her soul. 
At length her fury fell; her foaming ceased. 
And ebbing in her soul, the god decreased." 

Sometimes the worshiper shared with the in- 
spired women of the temple or of the cave their 
mental excitement. Hypnotic control is another 
possibility. It may be the Divine Presence was 
represented to the stimulated imagination by a 
beautiful woman trained to perform her part in 
the religious enchantment. All these sources of 
impression were known in some way and in some 
degree to the religous worship and service of the 
ancients. Trickery and fraud were not infre- 
quently made use of, and sometimes natural 
forces and agents were unwittingly pressed into 
service by men who believed them to be super- 
natural. There has been recently discovered, so 
it is reported, the secret of the "eternal flames" 
that burned from year to year without any visi- 
ble renewing of fuel upon the altar of Zoroaster 
on the "Sacred Isle" in the Caspian Sea, where 
the founder of the fire-cult preached his re- 
ligious doctrines. The altar was situated di- 
rectly over a deposit of natural gas. Neither 
the prophet nor his followers had any knowledge 
of the gas, which had probably been lighted by 
accident, and which, when once lighted, con- 
tinued to burn year after year. The mysterious 
flame, sustained with apparently no renewal of 
material for combustion, was easily mistaken for 



VICISTI GALLIL^E 243 

a celestial fire kindled and supported in attesta- 
tion of the doctrine and faith taught and served 
at the altar. A fire that burned for only a 
brief time authenticated the mission of Elijah 
and occasioned the overthrow of the priests of 
Baal. How much more convincing to men living 
under a primitive civilization must have ap- 
peared the "eternal flames" that required, so far 
as could be discovered, neither care nor fuel. 
Were those men and women who centuries ago 
adored that mystical fire fools or impostors? 
They were neither. They made the best use 
of the limited knowledge within their reach. 
More could not have been required of them. I 
cannot believe that the Infinite Mercy held them 
accountable for a light that never illuminated 
their darkened understanding, and for opportuni- 
ties they never enjoyed. What to them was a 
perpetual miracle is to us a natural phenomenon ; 
and doubtless some things that now strike us as 
supernatural will in future years seem common- 
place and quite within the power of the ordinary 
forces of the world to accomplish. Others will 
view them without surprise and explain them 
without difficulty. We do not know what Julian 
saw in the Temple of Hecate, but whatever it 
was, we are told that the first time he saw it he 
was filled with fear and instinctively made the 
sign of the cross. At once the entire display 
vanished, and where had been celestial glory was 
only empty air. Twice the same sign dissolved 
the pageant. Surprised at this, Julian ex- 



244 LOVE AND LETTERS 

claimed, "After all, then, the Christian sign has 
power!" The philosophers who had him in 
training were not in the least disconcerted. 
"Noble prince," said they, "do you think that 
you have frightened the gods? They fear 
nothing. They vanished because they were un- 
willing to associate with a profane person." 
The explanation, sophistical and disingenuous 
as it appears to us, satisfied the eager and inex- 
perienced mind of the young JuKan, and the sign 
was not repeated. Again a supernatural 
splendor illuminated the sacred recesses of the 
Temple, and a mysterious voice, possibly the 
musical echo of his own desires or of his excited 
imagination, or, it may be, the unscrupulous 
work of one versed in the art of ventriloquism, 
sounded in his ears, and it was revealed to him 
he should soon ascend the throne and destroy 
the religion of the Galilean. 

Constantius died November 3d, A. D. 355, and 
three days later Julian was declared Cassar. 
His sword and his pen were equally at the serv- 
ice of the faith he loved. Above all things he 
desired to restore the ornate splendor of the 
old order, and to give again to the discrowned 
gods their lost dignity; he would rekindle the 
sacred fire upon altars that had grown cold, and 
rebuild the ruined temples. We are in posses- 
sion of a body of literature, largely controver- 
sial, that he left to the world and that proves 
beyond question the sincerity of his purpose, 
while it exhibits the fine scholarship and beauti- 



VICISTI GALLILiEE 245 

ful training that won for him the admiration of 
many who neither sympathized with his faith 
nor desired the success of his plans. If we put 
aside the thought of his defection and consider 
his books as hterature we cannot fail of being 
impressed with their strength, reasonableness, 
and moderation. His orations and epistles ex- 
hibit great natural ability, and in but few places 
are they disfigured by bitterness of spirit or a 
vindictive temper, which is much more than can 
be said for most of the polemics of his day. 
He had what has been called "the saving grace 
of humor." He was quick-witted, good at re- 
partee, and able to condense much important 
material within a narrow compass. His knowl- 
edge of jurisprudence and his acquaintance with 
the art of governing men astonishes when we 
consider the age in which he lived and the cir- 
cumstances by which he was surrounded. Yet 
with all these rare attainments, his understanding 
of history and human nature, and his skill in 
dialectics and philosophy, he failed entirely in 
grasping the genius of the age in which he lived. 
The signs of the times he could not read. The 
ornate, artistic, literary, and beautiful Pagan- 
ism of his mind had no reality in the world 
around him. He idealized with a poet's fancy 
the vulgar and commonplace. The gods were 
dead but he knew it not. His mistake was radi- 
cal and its cost was great. Desiring the good 
of his fellow-men, he yet antagonized their best 
interests and identified his brief reign with an 



246 LOVE AND LETTERS 

unworthy and declining cause. The Chris- 
tianity of his time was miserably corrupt, and 
in some respects the Paganism it supplanted was 
its superior; still it was true then as it is now 
that the hopes of both the world and of the in- 
dividual gather around and center in the cross 
of the triumphant Galilean. 

That the Emperor resorted to severe measures 
in his effort to overthrow the church and re- 
store the worship of the gods is conceded, but it 
should be remembered to the credit of the man, 
and for a correct understanding of the end he 
had in view, that those measures were always 
regretted and were resorted to only when in his 
opinion sanguinary means could not be avoided. 
In one of his Epistles he wrote: 

"Again and again I charge all votaries of the true 
worship to do no wrong to the Galilean masses, 
neither to raise hand nor direct insult against them. 
For those who go wrong in matters of the highest 
import deserve pity, not hatred, for religion is ver- 
ily chiefest of goods, and irreligion the worst of 
evils." 

Again he wrote in an Epistle: 

"By the gods, I want no Galilean killed, or wrong- 
fully scourged, or otherwise injured. Godly men 
I do desire to he encouraged, and I plainly say they 
ought to be encouraged. This Galilean folly has 
turned almost everything upside down: nothing but 
the mercy of the gods has saved us all. There- 
fore we ought to honor the gods and godly men and 
cities." 



VICISTI GALLILJEE 247 

Sozomenus, who lived in the first half of the 
fifth century, says, in his "Ecclesiastic a His- 
torian'* that Julian "while minded in every way 
to support Paganism, accounted the compul- 
sion or punishment of unwilling worshipers ill- 
advised." St. Jerome tells us that Julian's sys- 
tem was "a gentle violence that strove to win, 
not drive." Crosius thinks the Emperor "was 
guilty of assailing Christianity by craft rather 
than by repression," and that he "wanted to 
make converts by stimulating ambition rather 
than by playing upon the fears of men." 

Julian strove in every way to make severity 
unnecessary. Yet he must have been at times 
sorely provoked to vengeance by the violence 
and insolence of his enemies, some of whom 
spared him not but upon every occasion held him 
up to the derision of the world. Gregory 
named him with Cain, Ahab, Herod, and the 
Sodomites. This last comparison was made in 
the face of the well-known fact of his exceptional 
temperance and chastity. He lived with almost 
austere moderation in an age of rampant vice. 
There are verses extant in which he is described 
as a "slayer of souls," "Satan's foul sink of 
crime," and a "tyrant accursed." Public 
prayers were offered for his destruction. Yet, 
if history may be believed, Julian was ever slow 
to retaliate. Few petitions, it would seem, were 
put up for his conversion. His destruction was 
the one thought and wish of his adversaries. 
The boast was openly made by men who viewed 



248 LOVE AND LETTERS 

prayer as a kind of magic that Julian would be 
prayed to his death. Libanius, the Sophist whom 
Julian addressed as his "Dearest Brother," wrote : 
"Does any one desire to know who was the man 
that killed the Emperor? I know not his name, 
but that he was none of the avowed and armed 
enemy there is clear proof." Libanius insinu- 
ates that the assassin was a Christian. 

Julian's effort to reform Paganism was the 
result of his early Christian education. The 
light of the Galilean had rendered the darkness 
and deformity of the old Paganism intolerable. 
It was Julian's purpose to engraft upon the re- 
ligion of the gods the ethics or morals of Chris- 
tianity. To that end he insisted that priests 
should lead holy lives ; they were to relieve the 
distresses of their fellow men, to do good to all 
men, to avoid all wicked actions and all indecent 
language. They were to give their time to 
study and to the worship of the gods. Three 
times each day they were to attend the temple 
with which they were connected. And only the 
pious and virtuous were to be elevated to the 
priesthood. "Such," to use the words of Milner 
"was the fire which the Apostate stole from 
heaven, and such was his artifice in managing 
it." ^ Julian established schools for the educar 
tion of young men, and he also founded hos- 
pitals, because, to use his own words, "the 
Galileans relieve both their own poor and ours." 
But the religion of the gods was a dead religion, 

1 "History of the Church of Christ," Chap. VIII. 



VICISTI GALLIL^E 249 

and no misguided effort could infuse into its 
heart the fire of hfe. 

That Julian despised the Christianity of his 
day, which was very unlike the religion of Jesus 
in many of its most salient features, is not 
strange. But that so bright a mind was wholly 
blind to the power of the Cross in any shape it 
could assume is truly astonishing. Julian was 
a philosopher and well-wisher of his race. He 
had a religious nature and desired to see virtue 
prevail. But the ^.rguments he advanced against 
the new and rising faith were neither forcible 
nor in any measure original. They were old and 
had been refuted many times. They were 
founded upon a complete misconception of Chris- 
tianity and an irrational idealization of the old 
Pagan cult, 

Julian died, wounded in battle, at the age of 
thirty-four, A. D. 363. Tradition has it that in 
the moment of death he threw up into the air a 
handful of his own heart's blood, exclaiming, 
"Vicisti, Galilaee!" — "Thou hast conquered, O 
Gahlean !" 

Fantastic is the tale, and yet in it there is a 
truth at once sad and glorious. Could Julian 
return from the dark shadows of the grave, would 
he not rejoice with us all in that bitter defeat 
which was in the end so great a victory? Let us 
say with Ibsen in his play of "The Emperor 
Julian" : 

"Here lies a splendid broken tool of God." 



250 LOVE AND LETTERS 

ADDENDUM 

It may be Julian had in the Temple of Hecate 
some such experience as was vouchsafed the 
initiant into the mysteries of Eleusis. These are 
described by Apuleius and Dion Chrysostome, 
who themselves passed through the truly awful 
ceremony. After entering- the grand vestibule 
of the mystic shrine, the aspirant was led by 
the hierphant, amidst surrounding darkness and 
incumbent horrors, through all those extended 
aisles, winding avenues, and gloomy adyta men- 
tioned by the writers named as belonging to the 
mystic temples of Egypt, Eleusis, and India. 
The metempsychosis was one of the leading prin- 
cipia taught in those temples, and the first stage 
in the induction of the new aspirant represented 
the wanderings of the benighted soul through 
the mazes of vice and error before initiation.^ 
Presently the ground began to rock beneath his 
feet, the whole temple trembled, and strange and 
dreadful voices were heard through the midnight 
silence. To' these succeeded other louder and 
more terrific noises, resembling thunder; while 
quick and vivid flashes of lightning darted 
through the cavern, displaying to his view many 
ghastly sights and hideous spectres emblematical 
of the various vices, diseases, infirmities, and 
calamities incident to that state of terrestrial 
bondage from which his struggling soul was now 

1 "It was a rude and fearful march through night and 
darkness." — Stohceus. 



VICISTI GALLIL^E 251 

going to emerge, as well as of the horrors and 
penal torments of the guilty in a future state. 

At this period, all the pageants of the system 
of worship represented, all the train of gods 
both supernal and infernal, passed in awful suc- 
cession before him; and a hymn, called "The- 
ology of the Gods," recounting the genealogy 
and functions of each, was sung. After this the 
whole fabulous detail was solemnly recited by the 
mystagogue; a divine hymn in honor of Eter- 
nal AND Immutable Truth was chanted, and 
the profounder mysteries commenced. And now, 
arrived on the verge of death and initiation, 
everything wears a dreadful aspect; it is all hor- 
ror, trembling, and astonishment. An icy chilli- 
ness seizes his limbs; a copious dew, like the 
damp of real death, bathes his temples ; he stag- 
gers, and his faculties begin to fail. Then the 
scene is of a sudden changed, and the doors of 
the interior and splendidly illuminated temple 
are thrown wide open. A miraculous and divine 
light discloses itself, and shining plains and flow- 
ery meadows open on all hands before him. Ar- 
rived at the bourn of mortality, after having 
trod the gloomy threshold of Proserpine, the ini- 
tiant passed rapidly through all the surrounding 
elements ; and at deep midnight beheld the sun 
shining in meridian splendor.^ The clouds of 
mental error and the shades of real darkness 
being now alike dissipated, both the soul and the 

i"Apuleii Metamorphosis," lib. ii. v. i. p. 273. Edit. 
Bipout, 1788. 



252 LOVE AND LETTERS 

body of the initiated experienced a delightful 
feeling of divine repose. While the soul, puri- 
fied with lustrations, bounded in a blaze of glory, 
the body dissolved in a tide of overwhelming 
transport. Plato says, "The aspirants saw celes- 
tial beauty in all the dazzling radiance of its 
perfection. They joined in the glorified chorus, 
and were admitted to the beatific vision ; they were 
initiated into the most blessed of all mysteries.'* 



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